


Trümmerjahre

by nedderfield



Category: Jojo Rabbit (2019)
Genre: Found Family, K's name is Kurt but he's mostly just K, M/M, Mid-Canon, Post-Canon, Pre-Canon, and, but also some
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-13
Updated: 2020-12-30
Packaged: 2021-02-28 19:34:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 46,208
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23282593
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nedderfield/pseuds/nedderfield
Summary: K lives and Jojo and Elsa and him stick together in post-war Germany.(or in which I bend canon over backwards to turn perfect character arcs into wish fulfilment fantasies while simultaneously trying to not make it too heimatfilmy)(there's also a kinda lenghty intro of pre- and mid-canon until the actual story starts, just so you know)
Relationships: Freddy Finkel/Captain Klenzendorf
Comments: 50
Kudos: 87





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. I would not have written this if I didn't believe it was made clear in the film that Klenzendorf and Finkel are not supposed to be Nazis — Nazis as in part of Nazi-organisations such as NSDAP, SA, SS, Gestapo etc., as in expressing through words or actions national socialist ideologies, attitudes, propaganda etc. in other contexts than 'playing along while in public' or being very cynical or ironic about it. They are, however, still higher-ranking officials in the Wehrmacht (which was by the way, though through the installed dictatorship of the NSDAP obviously under the control of the Nazis, not a Nazi-organisation per se but 'merely' the German army — unlike the SA or SS which were like the party's own paramilitary organisations by and for the party and which were, for example, responsible for things such as running and organizing the concentration and extermination camps) and I'm by no means saying that they are without guilt and clearly the film or even the characters themselves don't try to say this either (remember K saying how Rosie was an ' _actual_ good person' — unlike himself probably). The Wehrmacht and its submitting to the Nazis was one of the most important, if not the crucial enabler of the Nazis' reign of terror and their attempt to subdue the rest of the world. And naturally in its ranks were a lot of Nazis or people who at least sympathised with the Nazis and most of what they stood for and even more who didn't question the rightfulness of the war they were fighting in and the system they were serving by doing so, to not even mention the war crimes that were committed by parts of the Wehrmacht.  
> But let's also consider that, while being part of the Wehrmacht (which in itself also was, at least for Finkel, I'm not sure about K's age, obviously mandatory so the alternative would have been somewhere between running, death and resistance) and in more or less high positions at that  
> a) they basically never even wear their Wehrmacht uniforms properly, not to speak of what they do to them later on: ridiculing them even further by making them a display of the (by the Nazis and basically everyone else, too) persecuted group they belong to and even of the persecution itself, which is not only an act of disrespect towards the Wehrmacht but clearly a _fuck you_ towards the Nazis themselves, too  
> b) that they are, as I said earlier, very cynical and ironic when 'teaching' the children, giving advice, referring to their job or the overall situation and also that they  
> c) _do_ do a very shitty job.  
> I also want to add that they are not good because they are gay. Gay Nazis did exist (please look up Ernst Röhm) and being gay is not a redeeming quality, neither in this case or ever. They are good (character-wise) because they are clearly not on board with everything the Nazis do and express an overall reserved attitude towards the Nazi regime, because they are kind to Jojo and help or even 'rescue' him and, of course, because they do not report Elsa when they could have.  
> That being said I am fully aware that there is a possibility of reading the film and these characters in a different way. And if anyone is uncomfortable with these characters — please be! Please be uncomfortable with National Socialism, swastikas, He*l H*tlers and fascism. I'd rather people are oversensitive about this than the other way around. I just wanted to state why I chose to write about them and why I don't feel uncomfortable about it.  
> Even with everything else that is happening right now aside, we live in a messed-up world in messed-up times so let's never forget who the real enemy is and fight fascism every single day!
> 
> 2\. I had actually sworn to myself to never write (or at least to never publish) in English because it is not my first language and I couldn't ever gain control over it as I do over my mother tongue. But this just somehow happened and I also thought that, well, in this case... any hints of a German accent are obviously fully intentional. :-)
> 
> 3\. I feel the need to add: I'm not a historian and much less one specialised in this era. I'm doing (extensive, sometimes) research for this, especially because I think this contains so many sensitive issues and topics but lbr... in the end it's just a mixture of all the (entertainment) media I've myself consumed about this time, my limited history and general knowledge, personal family memories and histories and, well, that little extra research I'm doing. So let's better see it for what it is: a work of fiction based on a work of fiction.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which K recovers, meets someone and is about to get a new job.

[ **Trümmerjahre** _noun pl_ a term often used to refer to the immediate years following the end of the Second World War in Germany; _literally_ 'years of rubble']

# . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

_All I have is a voice  
To undo the folded lie,  
The romantic lie in the brain  
Of the sensual man-in-the-street  
And the lie of Authority  
Whose buildings grope the sky:  
There is no such thing as the State  
And no one exists alone;  
Hunger allows no choice  
To the citizen or the police;  
We must love one another and die._

_Defenceless under the night  
Our world in stupor lies;  
Yet, dotted everywhere,  
Ironic points of light  
Flash out wherever the Just  
Exchange their messages:  
May I, composed like them  
Of Eros and of dust,  
Beleaguered by the same  
Negation and despair,  
Show an affirming flame._

— W. H. Auden

# . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

There was misery everywhere. He had to turn his head unnaturally far to the right to take it all in. They had put the dying people at the other end of the room, far away from him and yet. He didn't recall exactly how long he had been here. Hours? Days? Anyway this was the first time he had fully awoken after he had arrived, had been cared for, fallen into a morphine-clouded sleep and then slept and slept and slept for he had no idea how long. Now he had sat up in his hard, uncomfortable bed. His hips hurt horribly, he was decidedly too old to sleep under these conditions. The smells of blood, rotting flesh and dozens of dozens of unwashed men made him nauseous. He decided that he needed to get up and get some fresh air. So he flung his blanket around his shoulders, put his bare feet into the dirty boots next to his bed and shuffled, as fast as he could manage, careful not to look too closely at the ailing figures around him, outside.

The sun had just set and it was freezing cold but the air was crisp and fresh and he actually enjoyed the cold on his skin, the light wind in his hair. Another man sat there, hunched over on a folding chair, his entire left arm put in plaster at an awkward angle. He asked him for a cigarette and the man handed him one, along with a lighter. They didn't exchange any more words, he just nodded a thank you, gave the lighter back, then took a deep drag from the cigarette and began to walk around a little. There were three more one-story make shift barracks like the one he was in. The hospital was set up in the middle of nowhere, a little forest to the left, bleak, uncultivated fields to the right, in the distance the faint outlines of a village. He finished his cigarette and fought the urge to scratch his right eye. He wore a bandage over it that was wrapped around his head and the skin under it, especially around the eye itched horribly. They had told him he had lost the eye's sight but they had been able to save the eye ball. Whatever that meant, he hadn't seen it for himself yet.

When he went back inside a nurse was waiting for him at his bed.

»Captain Klenzendorf, you're up. Good, are you feeling better? We're transferring you to another building, to a smaller room, away from this chaos. We had an entire truckload of newcomers come in yesterday night. _Trommelfeuer_ , horrible. That's why this place is so packed. Get your things, I'll show you.«

He got the few things he had with him from his nightstand and followed her to another building, where she led him into a room with only twelve beds, six on either side.

»Here you go, Captain, make yourself comfortable, in the morning there will be someone checking on your wounds and your eye. _Abendbrot_ will be in an hour or so.«

His bed was at the far end of the room, next to the window, which was looking out towards the forest, the last stripes of light sky glowing over it. He exchanged a couple of words with his immediate neighbours—names, units, where they had been, how they had ended up here, the usual stuff. Then the other ones resumed their card game and he flung himself onto his new bed. It was far from luxurious but still better than most places where he had spent his nights over the past weeks and months, hell, years. Which had been at or close to the front lines most of the time, in a sickening back and forth between east and west, attacking and pushing back and then, recently, quite a lot of being attacked and being pushed back, all cumulating in a severe attack on his unit which had resulted in an awful lot of casualties and also in his ending up here. It wasn't the first time he had to go to hospital during the war but the last time it had been mere scratches and he had been out and about after a couple of days. This time he was probably going to have to settle for a while.

He propped his head up on his pillow and took a look at the other men in the room. Most of them were sleeping or just dozing off, one was writing a letter on the back of a book and—he froze.

He was the second one from the door, on the other side of the room, a young, judging by his uniform, which was hanging over the chair next to his bed, sub-officer. He was seemingly unharmed, at least he looked perfectly healthy from where he was sitting. He was wearing starkly out-of-place striped silk pyjamas, sitting on his neatly made bed, the green blanket lying folded at the end of it, even his hair was combed into neat, blonde waves and he sat with his back leaning against the wall, supported by a cushion, the shoulders straight, his legs stretched out in front of him, one flung about the other and was reading a book, chewing on a thumb and smiling to himself dreamily.

Jesus, was he crazy? To parade it like that in front of everyone. That little sissy needed to watch out not to get in trouble. He looked around but nobody else seemed to pay him any attention. Was it really just so plainly obvious to him? Did nobody else care? Jesus, how could one just _sit_ there and radiate such—

Lost in thought, he realised too late that the man had looked up from his book and was now looking directly at him, an awkward smile on his lips. Quickly he looked away, but he knew it had been too late. He had been caught staring. Angry and ashamed he turned on his side, facing the window, his wounded arm ineptly stretched out across the edge of the bed, to not put pressure on it, and closed his remaining eye, pretending to try to sleep. This was the last thing he needed right now.

The weather next day was beautiful. It was still cold but the sky was cloudless and so after breakfast most of them, that is the ones who could get up, sat outside in the sun, chatting, reading, writing letters or diaries.

He had bought a newspaper at the little hospital shop and sat reading it, with Preßler, a lieutenant from Karlsbad who was in the bed opposite to him, sitting next to him, smoking the third cigarette this morning.

News, as per usual, were horrible. While he was reading them he wondered why he was reading them anyway. It was all so obviously glossed over. 20 tons of ammunition fired by the Americans per hour on the western front, air raids and losses everywhere but all was going just fine somehow. Cynically it was announced that Churchill, yet again, hadn't been able to win the war. When would he ever understand, the tone of the article was, that there was no winning the war against Germans who were, no matter how outgunned, apparently able to win any war by sheer force of will. It was bizarre. And even more bizarre were the announcements and ads in it. Latin tutoring was offered, ladies' bicycles were traded for radios, boots for suitcases, people were getting married, looking for apartments, offering jobs, selling cars. A black dog had gone missing during an air raid and LSV Fürstenfeldbruck had won 2:1 against FC Hertha München. Hadn't they heard, understood, that everything was falling apart?

Preßler next to him chuckled.

»He's too much, isn't he?«

»Hm?« he just responded without looking up from the paper.

» _Fräulein Unteroffizier_ over there.«

He looked up now, seeing the young sub-officer from his room talking to a bunch of other young men. With one hand on his hip he was laughing heartily at something one of the other ones had said. Goddamnit, he had thought the same thing just the night before but now that he heard Preßler say it—how dared he?

He made a forced chuckling sound and clutched the newspaper ever so much tighter, just to keep his hands from punching Preßler in his stupid face. He tried to concentrate back on the newspaper but found that he couldn't. Before he knew it his eyes had wandered up again. He was beautiful, there was no doubt. He wasn't tall, much like himself, but his body was athletic, his posture upright. And still there was something clumsy, almost silly and yet adorable about him.

Again, he seemed to have sensed that someone was looking at him because he turned around, as if searching someone, until his eyes found his. This time he didn't look away. At least not immediately. It was mainly due to the fact that he was wearing his sunglasses, awkwardly pushed over his bandage, which made him feel that there was no way he could be sure that he was _actually_ looking at him. But there was also a little part in him ... liking this. Being looked at. Looking at. Exchanging gazes. Although he had no intention of this leading to anything, he enjoyed this. For the first time in weeks, months, he felt almost excited.

This time, neither of them smiled, both their faces remained expressionless. It was just their locked gazes, in the middle of the crowd, no one but them noticing. It lasted mere seconds but it seemed like a little, tiny eternity, where time and space had stopped mattering so much. Finally, he withdrew his gaze, lowered is head and looked back at the newspaper, and then stayed like that, but without reading a single word.

The rest of the day passed without any more interactions. Instead he met some of the fellow lucky survivors of his unit who had been in the attack with him and who had now, too, found their way to the hospital. Two of them were only superficially wounded, the third one had lost a leg and was being wheeled around by the other ones in a wheelchair. They organised a few bottles of schnapps and spent the late afternoon as well as the evening getting gloriously drunk. When he finally staggered back into his quarters it was long after midnight and everyone else was already sound asleep, including the nameless sub-officer, whom he found lying in his bed almost as neatly as he had sat on it yesterday—lying on his back with one arm under his head and the other one resting on his stupid, beautiful, silken-pyjamaed chest. He grunted at himself angrily for thinking that, took a deep breath and continued to his own bed. This was ridiculous. He was ridiculous. It had evidently been way too long since he had gotten laid properly.

It was only two days later that they first met. Until then they had somehow, albeit sharing a room, managed to avoid each other. Nevertheless he had the vague feeling that the sub-officer was just as constantly aware of their _not interacting_ as he himself was. Or maybe that was just his sad, touch-starved imagination.

Now it was just after lunch and he stood on the corridor of their building where he had run into a sergeant from the next room, whom he had met the evening before during a round of cards, and whose name had slipped him already, who had engaged him into a rather one-sided conversation about the front situation in Hungary.

Only half-listening, the man regained his attention when he came to an abrupt halt, having spotted someone behind him.

»Oh, Finkel, come here, have you heard back from Stockhausen yet?«

Finkel appeared next to them, shaking his head, and carefully avoiding to look in his direction. His heart skipped a beat. It was him, his previously nameless sub-officer.

»No,« Finkel said, to the sergeant, his voice sounding thin and twitchy. He cleared his throat. »No, I haven't. But I heard that the post isn't coming through since Wednesday, so I guess that's what's causing the delay.«

»Ah, right. And how are you doing? Any better?«

He nodded. »It's alright.«

»Good. Good,« the sergeant said, as if running out of things to say. Then he abruptly turned his head.

»Oh, but sorry! Sub-officer Finkel, Captain Klenzendorf,« he introduced them. »Finkel and I arrived here together a couple of weeks ago,« he explained, and then turned to Finkel. »Klenzendorf really trashed me at Doppelkopf last night.«

Finkel now dared to look into his direction, his brows raised and an unreadable expression around his mouth. He gave a quick nod into Finkel's direction and Finkel returned it, with a startled blink.

The sergeant then continued talking, sharing some clearly inflated stories from his time on the front, oblivious to the mild disinterest of his audience and the darting glances which where casted whenever one thought the other one wasn't looking. It was odd, seeing him so closely now. He couldn't help but feeling a little appalled. What had he been thinking. He wasn't _that_ beautiful. His features were a little odd and there was a certain stiffness in him, that he found he didn't particularly like. Also he seemed rather reserved towards him. He just stood there, his arms behind his back, nodding along to what the sergeant was saying until, after a couple of minutes of ensued small talk, he finally excused himself and left.

So that had been that. He felt like someone had shaken him awake from a dream. There was clearly nothing going on between them or if there had been it had been mere nothingness which was over now. 

The following days passed somewhere between drinking, sleeping and the occasional card game. He was miserable, his eye hurt and the shrapnel wounds at his arm did too. And if there was a striped pyjama that he sometimes found himself watching from the corner of his eye so there was. He actually couldn't wait to get out of here, to his well-earned holiday and then who knew? At some point some highly decorated guy had come by and had handed him, accompanied by some big words that he had failed to actually listen to, the golden Wound Badge and then had disappeared again, leaving him with it and its certificate. Great, another piece of clutter for his uniform that would most probably never see actual war again. A one-eyed man, that was a figure for tales and myths but not for the front.

And so he just awaited the day that the doctors would decide he was fit to go, to then leave this place and any sub-officers in it far behind him. 

Only it didn't go quite like that. One of these nights, that sergeant who had introduced them had brought Finkel to playing cards and so they had met again but without anything remarkable happening. It was like he had thought, whichever nothingness there had been, was over. Finkel had, if not ignored him, been strikingly neutral towards him. He was friendly but never forthcoming, never gave him more attention than absolutely necessary. His mannerisms still seemed rather camp to him most of the time although to a lesser extent than when he had been absent-mindedly reading in their room. And he did sense now that the other ones did pick it up, too, and saw amused gazes being exchanged at times when Finkel wasn't looking. Regardless, he got along very well with most of them and the ones he had been at the front with could attest to his being an able, durable and clever fighter and leader which earned him the respect from anyone who had been in doubt about his abilities. He was an eager listener, didn't talk much himself and when he did it wasn't of much consequence. No front stories, no stories of sexual conquests (this was one of the most tiresome side effects of being in the army—being forced to listen to hourlong stories of who had fucked which pussy where and when and how and how often and how long, and what sexually transmittable disease they had taken away from it, one tale more improbable than the other, day in and day out, and it was a true miracle that he hadn't shot himself already, he sometimes thought), no war prognoses, no political opinions, but then—nobody had those around here.

And he himself? He tried to forget about all of it, tried to overlook him and barely ever addressed him directly. And still he couldn't stop himself from noticing things. Things on him. When he tried to concentrate on the oddness and the stiffness in him, that he had told himself he disliked, he found himself noticing other things instead. His arms, for example (firm and muscular). The colour of his eyes (blue with a hint of green). His wrists (beautiful). The look on his face when his mind had wandered off (a little sad). Those little wrinkles under his eyes when he smiled (adorable). And that one time he got up from the table: his thighs (to die for). Stupid. Just stupid. But he couldn't help it.

And then finally one night, everything went a little different. They had been playing cards again, with the usual round to which now somehow he as well as Finkel belonged and at some point the game had started to turn into a duel between the two of them, forcing them to interact, to look at each other, to bicker and to tease. And Finkel had been different tonight, too. Mischievous, silly. Loud even. He had had an awful lot to drink, which he usually didn't, so it was probably mainly because of that. But still. At one point he had even kicked him under the table.

Had it been flirting? He wasn't sure. He just knew that it was there again—that twinge of excitement.

Now that the game was over (Preßler had somehow overtaken both of them so neither of them had won after all) he was standing outside, leaning against the barrack, getting some fresh air as he liked to before he went to bed. A cigarette dangling from his mouth, he had leaned his head back against the wall, looking up into the sky at a thin layer of clouds covering it, stars shimmering through it here and there. He couldn't let this happen. Not now, not here. If it wasn't all in his imagination after all. Which still might just be what was really going on. To think someone as fit and young as Finkel would even be interested in a sad old man like him, who was, to make the whole picture just a tad more unfortunate still, wearing a ridiculous bandage over half his face. God, if only they had sent him home already. He wanted him so badly. He was still only half-admitting this to himself but it was so. But no. He wouldn't. On the other hand, maybe this setting wasn't too bad after all. He wasn't from his unit, so he wasn't his boss or anything and chances were high that their paths wouldn't ever cross again. And he had had a few affairs in the army of course. Here and there, just casual stuff. But then it hadn't been like this. It hadn't been so much staring at the stars, contemplating, not so much thinking about blue-green eyes and thighs. God, his thighs.

Someone cleared his throat right next to him. He almost jumped. It was, of all people, Finkel.

»Jesus Christ!« he snapped before he knew it. »Don't sneak up on me like that.«

»I uh ... sorry, I ...,« Finkel stuttered, and he could have sworn seeing his cheeks reddening even in the dim light of the outdoor lamp.

He immediately felt sorry but at the same time felt something inside his belly turn into jello upon seeing Finkel so flustered. Good God.

»No, I'm sorry. It's just that I don't see you when you're ...,« he gestured towards the right side of his head. »There. You scared the shit out of me.«

»Sorry. Really, I didn't mean to. I actually, I just, um, wanted to ask you for a cigarette actually,« he managed to say, his words still a little slurred from the alcohol.

He rummaged through his pockets, finding one last cigarette in his package and handed it to him. When he had fished his lighter out of the pocket as well he considered just handing it to Finkel for a second but somehow found himself lighting the cigarette for him instead, one hand shielding the flame from the wind, brushing his cheek ever so lightly.

»Thanks,« Finkel said quietly and took a deep drag which seemed to get stuck half way down his throat. He choked it with a supressed cough. It didn't look like he regularly smoked.

For a minute neither of them said anything, he just looked at Finkel, waiting for what was to come, why he had actually approached him and Finkel avoided looking at him at all, staring alternately at the floor or into the darkness.

»I ... um. Can I ask you a question?« he asked Finkel finally, because something had to be said.

»Sure,« Finkel said, making it sound like a question and sounding the opposite.

»What is that guy's name?«

»Who?« Finkel asked blankly.

»That sergeant. The one who introduced us the other day.«

»Wenzel?«

»Oh right!«

»What, you didn't know his name?« Finkel asked in amused disbelieve.

»I was fairly smashed when he introduced himself.«

»When beating him at Doppelkopf?«

»Yes.« He couldn't help but notice that he had remembered that.

»Well, sorry you couldn't beat me tonight.«

»As if you would have let me.«

»Let you? No, never. But you had a pretty good streak until, well, until you didn't.«

»Well,« K said, »unlucky at cards it is for tonight then.«

Finkel cast his eyes down, took another half-hearted drag from his cigarette and smiled.

»Why are you here?« he asked Finkel after again neither of them had said anything for a while.

»What do you mean?«

»I mean how are you injured?«

»Oh,« Finkel said. »Yes, well, I was hit pretty bad in the side.« He gestured towards the upper part of his left abdomen. »It's a miracle I'm alive apparently. Lost tons of blood, had several fractured rips, a liver rupture, and they had to take my spleen out. Then it was waiting for my fever to break, hoping that I wouldn't get peritonitis. And now it's waiting for the pretty messy wound to properly heal, which takes forever apparently.«

»Jesus« was the only thing he knew to say. And there he had been thinking Finkel hadn't been injured at all or something.

»It's alright. Or I hope it will be,« Finkel said and for a moment his gaze had lost itself in the distance as if scanning the darkened horizon for a hint of what the future might bring. Then he let out a sigh. »It's just sitting that sucks really. Takes me ages to find a position I can sit in without being in too much pain. And sleeping sucks, too. I usually sleep on my front which of course I can't now.«

»But it's okay for you to walk around like this? Shouldn't you be resting?«

»Oh no, on the contrary. The doctor said at this point walking would do me good and also it's the least pain I can be in. So I do walk around a lot. Go on walks and that.«

»Where do you go to?«

»Oh just around, through the fields or when you go up the hill through the forest you have a little view. It's quite nice.« Finkel paused for a moment. »You could come some time« he then said.

He smiled. »Gladly. I would take any chance to get out of here.«

Finkel smiled back at him. »So how about tomorrow?«

»I'll have to check my currently very busy calendar but I think tomorrow is fine.«

Finkel laughed and discarded of the butt of his cigarette, which he had hardly smoked the half of, the rest had been taken away by the wind while the cigarette had rested idly between his fingers.

»Good,« he said and smiled. »So, Captain Klenzendorf, should we—«

»Oh let's get rid of these formalities, no? You can call me, well just K is fine.«

Finkel looked at him quizzically.

»K? What kind of a name is that?«

»Well, mine.«

Finkel made a grimace and laughed. »Yes, but come on, what is it short for?«

»Why do you need to know?« he asked him, happy to tease him a little.

»I don't. But how bad can it be?«

»It's not bad. K is just what most people call me.«

»Oh, yes? Most people? What does your _Mama_ call you?«

He regarded him with a long look. »Kurtchen,« he said then, a little reluctantly and smiled an extra sweet smile, »if you need to know.«

Finkel giggled. »Kurtchen,« he repeated. » _Soso_. Well, Kurtchen—K, I'm Freddy anyway.«

»Freddy? What kind of a name is that?« he asked, mimicking him.

»What? It's my actual name.«

»Really? So it's not short for, say, Friedrich?«

»No. I mean it is, obviously. But I'm just Freddy. It's the name _my_ Mama gave me.«

»Ok then, Freddy,« he extended his hand to him, »nice meeting you. May I accompany you to your room until we meet again tomorrow?«

Freddy took it laughingly and didn't let go of it for quite a long moment.

They left for their walk the next day after lunch. K had still been a little sceptical about this. Not only about everything that was happening right now, whatever it was, but also about him, Freddy, and about this particular outing. About wandering around together. Sober, more or less. Wouldn't it be awfully awkward? Would they even have anything to talk about? Would it come right down to sex? Did he want that?

But it turned out nothing of the kind. Freddy was more or less educated, well-read, witty and very easy to talk to, especially now that they were alone, away from everyone else. Not one word was spoken about the war, they just talked and laughed, about everything and nothing really, and giggled like silly teenagers. And there was flirting, yes. But it was also just awfully chaste. Just a lot of dancing around each other, stealing little touches and glances.

It was the distraction from everything else both hadn't known they had needed so badly and by the time they came back to the hospital, where a new group of badly injured soldiers had just arrived, they both needed a moment to realise that everything was still going on, that nothing had changed, that the war and all of that was still happening.

So they set off for another walk the next day. The sun was already lowering and it was looking as if there would be a beautiful sunset. So they had headed off west, towards the forest, had climbed up the hill and now sat on a fallen tree, looking over the hills and valleys below them, both smoking a cigarette and passing K's flask between them.

»It's so beautiful,« Freddy said, his voice pensive and his eyes lost on the horizon. The sunset had tinted the sky above it into a deep pink, and clouds like flames were darting up into the cool blue sky above them, birds swarming as small black dots against it. It was otherworldly.

»Yes. It's ... almost too bad there's a war going on and everything's getting blown up. Rotting bodies everywhere, bowel in the trees.«

Freddy casted him a disgruntled look. »Thanks for spoiling the mood.«

»Well, that's how it is, isn't it?«

Freddy shrugged. »Well, of course.«

»Sorry,« K said. »It' just ... you know what I see when I look at this?«

Freddy gave him a questioning look.

»Terrain. I see terrain. I don't see pretty hills or a sunset. I see possible hideouts, assault routes, plains, ridges, plateaus.« He shook his head. »My brain just really has gone bye-bye. Sorry.«

But Freddy sighed an assenting sigh. »I know what you mean. This shit brainwashes you.«

They were silent for a moment.

K cast a look sideways at Freddy. He had that sad look on his face, the one he had noticed before, when his mind had wandered off. He nudged him in the side. »Sorry. It is beautiful. It really is. I shouldn't have broken our agreement.«

»Agreement?«

»Not to talk about the war.«

»Did we have that agreement?«

»Well I don't know, but we didn't. Talk about the war, so far at least. And I thought that was kind of nice.«

Freddy nodded. »Yes,« he said quietly.

»So let's just not. I swear I'm not that cynical about everything.«

»I know.«

»Do you?«

Freddy looked at him. »Yes, of course I do.« He smiled. »I do know you a little by now.«

K smiled back at him. He could have kissed him right then and there. His smile, his eyes and his golden hair in the soft light of the setting sun. There was the beauty he couldn't see in the landscape, at this he could have stared for hours and not grow tired of it. For a moment their eyes lingered on each other, then Freddy looked away, first down the hill, then down at the tips of his boots.

»So. What are you reading?« K asked him after they had been silent for a moment.

»Huh?«

»I'm just trying to find something else to talk about. And I saw you reading a book the other day.«

»Oh that. _Die Powenzbande_. Do you know it?«

K shook his head. »I think I heard the title, maybe.«

»My mother sent it to me from home. It's funny. Takes your mind off things.«

K chuckled.

»What?« Freddy asked, raising an eyebrow.

»Did your mother send you your pyjamas as well?«

»What?« Freddy asked again, blankly. »She did. Why?«

»No, it's ... cute. Makes you look like you're in a luxury resort or something.«

»Oh, shut up,« Freddy said sulkily, not knowing whether to be flattered or embarrassed while K grinned at him.

»Doesn't your mother ever send you stuff?«

»She's dead,« K said.

»Oh shit, sorry.« Freddy's voice sounded truthfully concerned. »I thought you said, when you said she called you Kurtchen ...«

»Yes, well, she did call me that. Sorry, I should have said. But it seemed a weird moment to mention it.«

»It's okay, though,« K hurried to say upon seeing Freddy's face. »She was over seventy and very ill. She had breast cancer, for a while really, it was a tough couple of years for her, so when it was finally over last year it was good for her and I mean now ... I'm kind of glad she doesn't have to live through all of this, too.«

»Well,« Freddy began, »it's still sad though, isn't it? I can't even imagine if my mother ... no.« He shook his head as if trying to discard of just the imagination of it.

»So you and your mother are very close?«

»I think so. I mean, yes, we are. I have two younger sisters which have both been married for a while now. And my father died a long time ago so it was just the two of us in the last couple of years. Or, well, with me gone now, too, she is all alone now really. That's why she sends me stuff all the time. And letters. And if I don't write back immediately she's worried sick.« He rolled his eyes and sighed, but fondly. »Do you have any siblings?«

»I ...,« K began, hesitating. »I had. An older brother, Max. He died in the war. The other one I mean, the World War, in 1917. He was only 21.«

»Oh, I'm sorry,« Freddy said, biting his lip.

»Sorry, family isn't a very happy subject with me. They're all dead. My father died in the war, too. Or on the way back rather. Spanish flu. So it's just me now.«

»That must be hard?«

»It is. But it is what it is. But, wait. Actually I have ...,« K reached into his jacket and retrieved a small metal box. He opened it and found, between a couple of papers, a postcard which was folded in the middle. He handed it to Freddy.

Freddy unfolded it and looked at it. It was an old-timey photograph, taken in a photo studio, showing two young men, almost boys still, in quite stiff postures. The smaller one of them in a dark three-piece suit and neatly combed hair and standing next to him, with his hand on the other one's shoulder, the taller one in the light grey army uniform from back then.

»Is that him?«

K nodded.

»And the other one is you?« Freddy asked.

»Can't you see?«

Freddy looked back and forth between K and the boy in the picture, studying both faces. The boy's features were much softer than K's but if he squinted he definitely could see him in there somewhere.

»Well, I think it would be easier if half your face wasn't hidden under that bandage.« He laughed and looked at the photo, then back at K again, smiling. »Your lower lip. I do recognise your lower lip.«

K looked at him sceptically and laughed. »My lower lip? That is _very_ specific. What about my upper lip?«

But Freddy made a grimace and a shook his head. »Nah, I don't know about that one.« He paused for a moment. »Maybe I'll have to take a closer look one of these days.«

They both looked at each other for a moment until K let out an awkward laugh. »Okay then.«

Freddy quickly turned his eyes onto the photograph again.

»How old are you in this picture?« he asked, in a less playful tone now, as if eager to get back into steady terrain with this conversation.

»15, maybe 16. Something like that,« K answered, adapting to his tone.

»Were you close? You and your brother I mean.«

»I guess. I remember how I looked up to him. He was my hero. I couldn't wait until I would be old enough to join the army, too. And I remember how devasted I was when he died. But I barely remember him now. It has been almost 30 years—or it actually has been if you consider that I almost never saw him after he had left for the war, and then of course I went to war as well, so we didn't really see each other anymore. After then, he just kind of faded away. How he looks in this picture, that's what I remember of him. There are some other pictures as well, from when he was younger. But all the rest? Gone.« He made a waving gesture next to his head.

Freddy looked back at the photo, still in his hands. »He does look like you, too,« he said. »You have the same nose. And the ... just the shape of your face somehow, and the expression of it.«

Freddy smiled at the picture one last time and then handed it back to K, who now looked at it as well.

»You think so? People always used to say that we looked so much alike. But I never saw that.«

»I think you never do yourself. People always say I look exactly like my sister Irmi. I mean, wow, well thanks.« Freddy laughed.

K laughed, too, putting the photo carefully back into the metal box and sliding it back into his jacket, then looking back at Freddy.

»So she's pretty then?« he said, extra seriously and matter-of-factly, just to tease him a little.

»What?«

»Your sister? She's pretty?«

»What—Why?« he said, a mild hint of panic in his voice.

»Because she looks like you, stupid.«

Freddy went crimson and hid his face behind his hands. »Oh, fuck off,« he murmured, badly suppressing a flattered giggle.

K laughed. »I mean it though.«

»Yes. I'm sure you do.«

»I really do.«

Freddy looked up again, shaking his head at him.

»You're so stupid,« K said, still laughing and then their eyes met and before he could think he had kissed him. Or Freddy had kissed him. He really didn't know for sure. As fast as it had happened it was over. He had pulled away, biting his lip.

»Not here,« he said.

»Sorry,« Freddy said bashfully, avoiding his gaze.

»Don't apologise,« K reassured him. »It's just. Well, you know how it is.«

Freddy nodded. »So, you're not ... angry?«

K sent him a sceptical look, then he laughed. »You really are stupid, are you?«

They made their way back to the hospital then, as it was getting dark, neither of them commenting on what had happened. But something had shifted. It was like there was an electric energy between them now. They played a round of cards with the other guys, ate supper, all normal to the outside world. But within their world, only perceptible to them, all had changed.

What had been uncertain, was certain now. What had been hoped for, was becoming reality. What had been feared, had to be faced.

They had just returned to their room, starting to get ready for bed when Freddy, who had been standing a little aimlessly beside his bed as if not being able to decide whether he should undress or not, let out an agitated sigh, exclaimed »I need some air,« more to himself than to anyone else, but still audible to everyone in the room and then stormed out through the door.

The other ones looked after him in bewilderment for a moment but then shrugged it off and resumed whatever they had been doing. Everyone here was on edge at times one way or the other.

»I ... I'm going to check on him,« K murmured, grabbed his coat and left the room, too.

He found Freddy outside, leaning against the wall next to the entrance to their building.

»Are you okay?« he asked him.

Freddy nodded slowly, averting his eyes. Then he looked up, right at him, then down on his hands.

»I just ... I ... we ...,« he began, stuttering. He looked around to make sure that there was nobody listening to them, watching them. »I want to be alone with you,« he then said, barely audible.

K took a deep breath. »Yes,« he said, just as quietly, »me too.«

And so they stepped into the dark night. Only illuminated by a half moon, covered by a thin layer of quickly moving clouds they found their way towards the protecting shadows of the little forest. Neither of them said a word. Neither of them seemed to lead the way. It was just one following the other, simultaneously, in union. Then their hands found each other in the darkness, and they pulled each other in the direction of a small, abandoned barn, where they stopped, K leaning into its wooden wall and Freddy facing him, taking his other hand, too. They remained like that for a moment until they moved closer still, their foreheads touching, leaning into each other, listening to each other's breathing and then, finally, K moved in to press his lips on Freddy's, and they finally, finally kissed, properly now. First tentatively, then tenderly, then desperately. Freddy tasted like coffee and schnapps and sweetness. And he was warm, his body against his. K's hands wandered up about his face, through his hair, to his neck, down his back, taking it all in, feeling his warmth. Then he grabbed him urgently by his sides to pull him closer still but Freddy immediately winced and shied away, hissing with pain.

»Oh, shit. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry,« K whispered, cupping Freddy's face. »I didn't think, I forgot, I'm sorry.«

Freddy pressed his forehead into K's shoulder, panting, while he waited for the pain to cease.

K pressed a tentative kiss into Freddy's hair. »I'm sorry,« he said again. »Are you okay?«

Freddy nodded. »In a second.«

K's hands gently stroked Freddy's back while Freddy still leaned against him, his breathing slowly becoming less heavy.

»I didn't want to hurt you,« he whispered.

»Don't worry« Freddy said quietly, a smile in his voice, and pressed a kiss onto K's lips. »Just don't do that again.«

»I won't. You good?«

As a response Freddy just cupped his face and resumed kissing him, first on the lips, then on his neck, sucking lightly on his stubbled jaw, his collarbone, then moved down to his chest as far as the open collar allowed. K had closed his eyes, limply leaning back against the wooden wall and let out little sighs while Freddy's hands moved down, down, further down until he himself followed them, carefully letting himself sink to his knees.

When he came up again, K, still panting, pulled him into a deep kiss and didn't let go of him until he had to come up for air.

»What do you want me to do?« K asked, his voice hoarse and breathy.

»Just hold me and touch me,« Freddy whispered.

And so he did, with Freddy slumped against him, his head pressed into his shoulder, breathing small puffs of air into his neck.

They returned to their room, one after the other, a couple of minutes apart, just to be sure, with freezing fingers and noses but with a bright grin on their faces that they both had a hard time to conceal. They didn't dare to look at each other, fearful not to be able to control their faces, giving away something, anything, to anyone who could be watching them. But regardless they were in union, sensed the other one's presence.

What had he gotten himself into, K thought as he finally lay in his bed, his face facing the window, his heart facing the second bed on the other side of the room. He hadn't felt like this since ... well a very long time ago. He fell asleep with a smile on his lips and a blissful warmth in his chest.

They now sneaked out for their encounters as often as they could have possibly managed. Always in the dark though, they wouldn't have dared to do anything they did in broad daylight. It was one thing to do this stuff when you were out in the field, in the chaos and confusion, when you were on the move, met someone, with changing crews and people. But here, in this enclosed space, with the same people around for weeks—no, it was way too dangerous. So the days still belonged to walks and talking while the nights belonged to other things.

And soon, too soon, the time came that K had wished for so eagerly just a couple of days back. One morning the nurse who changed his bandages exclaimed cheerfully how well his wounds had healed and she was sure he would be fit to go very soon, maybe even the next day or the day after. She would send for a doctor to check and if he gave his okay, he would be released.

He couldn't see, because the nurse was standing between them but he could practically sense Freddy freeze over there in his bed, because he was sure he must have heard. And really, when she moved on to the next bed, he dared to look over to Freddy, who regarded him with a long and almost expressionless look. But he could nevertheless see the same sadness in it that he was feeling. The not knowing what would become of them. Was it too much to hope that they would stay in contact? Was it silly to ever having assumed this would last? Had this been anything more than just a little fling, a halt in a hopeless, collapsing world, where nothing had a future anyway?

When they went on their walk that day, they didn't talk much. Neither of them dared to address the inevitable.

Only the next day, when in the morning a doctor had come around and decided that K indeed was all set to go home, and they sat on one of the benches outside after the ward rounds, tightly wrapped in their coats but happy to sit in the sun, Freddy dared to speak.

»So you're leaving,« he said.

»Yes,« K just said, casting a look at Freddy, trying to read his expression.

»Where will you be going?«

K shrugged. »To my mother's house I think. Take care of it a little so I can sell it. I don't really have any place to be. And then wait for them to tell me where I'll go next.«

»And where's that? Your mother's house?« Freddy asked him because really, they hadn't talked about that yet, home. Because there was the thing about it, home. It was in one way the place everyone here longed for most, where everyone wanted to go. But it was also a place, a concept almost just by now, so remote and far, both in space and time, of another world, another time, another reality almost. And even if you went there from time to time on your holiday, as soon as you were back here you wondered if it hadn't been only just a dream. And then, in a way, it really didn't exist anymore. There was war now there, too. Different from the war out here, but war still. Bombed out, hunger-stricken, manless, home was. And so you didn't allow yourself to think about it too often. That place you longed for. That was no more. And that would maybe never be again.

»In Röditz,« K said now. »A little village close to Falkenheim. Do you know Falkenheim?«

Freddy nodded. »I've never been there, though.«

»I haven't really lived there for ages, too,« K said. »I went to school in Falkenheim but moved to Berlin after the war and have been there most of the time and haven't really stayed in touch with anyone from Falkenheim. Only came back to Röditz shortly before the war started, to take care of my mother and then visited her whenever I was on holiday. And what about you? Where will you go when they let you?«

»I guess I'm due for a holiday, so home. To Bad Wackerach.«

»Bad what?«

»Bad Wackerach?« Freddy repeated. »It's close to Bad Kreuznach, in the Pfalz? Close to the Rhine? Just one of these little spa towns, pretty half-timbered houses, green hills, but not much going on.«

»And what are you going to do in ... Bad Wackerach?«

»Spend time with my mother, I guess. Visit my sisters perhaps. One just had another baby, so I guess I should look at it.«

K laughed. »So you're very enthusiastic about babies.«

Freddy shrugged. »No, it's just. I don't know. No, to be frank I really can't bring myself to care about that kind of stuff. I don't know. I don't know what to do with them. Someone hands them to you and then you hold them and say how cute they are or something. And they never are. They are my nieces and nephews, and I do care about them of course but ... All that stuff just never was for me, families, children ... but I mean well, obviously.«

K raised an eyebrow. »It's not so obvious. You could still want children. You could still get married. A lot of people do. A lot of people did.« For a brief moment there was a bitterness in his face and in his voice as if he was referring to someone in particular, someone from a long time ago.

But Freddy didn't pick it up and just chewed on his lip.

»Did ...,« Freddy started but his voice sounded hoarse. He cleared his throat. »Did you?« he tried again.

»Me?« K laughed. »Nah.«

Freddy tried to conceal a relieved smile, only half-succeeding.

»No,« K repeated, »broke my Mama's heart but no. No more Klenzendorfs. Although ... I would've liked it. Hypothetically I mean. Children, a family. It's a nice concept. But what can you do. I didn't want it that badly that I would have married some woman for it. But nieces and nephews, that would have been nice.«

»I can lend you mine,« Freddy laughed.

»Great, thanks. I'll get back to you on that one.«

They both smiled for a moment, but then Freddy's smile faded away and he casted a look into K's direction.

»Seriously though,« he said then, tentatively, »will we see each other again?«

»Can anyone be sure about that these days?«

»Be serious.«

»I don't know. Would you like that?«

»I asked you first.«

K sighed and let his gaze linger on Freddy for a moment. Then he smiled. »I think I would. Like that. I mean I would. I would really like that.«

Freddy smiled, shyly. »Good,« he said quietly. »Because I would, too.«

They looked at each other for a moment, grinning a little foolishly and then tried to seal with their eyes what they couldn't seal with a kiss.

They went on one final walk that afternoon. They had told K that there would be a train to Brünn the next morning which he would take and so it was a weird mood they were both in. Hyped from the prospect of staying in touch and at the same time being extra giggly just to not having to be sad. Pretending not to wonder if they would really ever see each other again. How everything would be as soon as they would be both home. Apart. Growing apart. If letters would be able to keep this alive. And if the next months would be able to keep them alive, quite literally. Because really, who knew these days? And so they were silly instead, chased each other through the woods, playfighting, just to touch.

»What did you think of me when you first saw me?« Freddy asked as they had reached the viewpoint up the hill and had once more sat down on the fallen tree, even though it was cloudy and a little misty and no real view was to see.

»What?« K said, a little panicked as he remembered what he _had_ thought.

»What you thought of me. That night when you were put in our room. I could tell you were looking at me.«

K grinned a little sheepishly. »I know. But you really don't want to know.«

» _Aha_? I think I do, too,« Freddy said but K didn't respond. »Do you want to know what I thought of you?« He kicked K's leg with tip of his boot. »I thought you were a smug asshole.«

K looked at him unimpressed. »Maybe I am.«

But Freddy laughed a quiet little laugh and shook his head. »No you're not.«

»And what am I then?«

»You are a very nice man. Kind. With a good heart. Which you like to conceal under a lot of gruffness and cynicism. But you're not doing a very good job about it, sorry.«

K grunted and shook his head, hiding a little grin. »How do you know that? You don't even know me. I might just really be an asshole.«

»Hey, I do know you. I might not know everything about you but still I just know. I can see that. In the way you are. In the way you are with me. And I can see it in your eyes.« Freddy paused. »Well, your eye I mean.«

K gave him an exasperated gaze.

»Oh shit no, I'm sorry. I didn't think. I didn't mean ... I didn't want to make a pun or anything. It was just, well. How should I have said it?«

»I don't know,« K admitted.

»Have you seen it? Your eye?«

K nodded.

»And? How does it look?«

»Ugly.«

»Aw,« Freddy said and extended his hand to give K's cheek a quick but gentle stroke with the back of his hand. »I'm sure it's not that bad.«

K just shrugged but Freddy smiled.

»I'm going to miss that grumpy face,« he said fondly.

»Are you now?« K said. Then he looked around, to make sure nobody was watching them.

»And I'll miss you, too,« he said and then pressed a kiss onto Freddy's cheek.

They sat in silence for a moment, the impending having come back into focus.

»Give me your book,« K then suddenly said.

»Why?« Freddy said, bemused, but nevertheless handed him the book which he had been carrying around since he had been reading it before they had left.

»I want to give you a farewell present.«

»But this is _me_ giving something to _you_.«

But had K had already pulled a crumpled piece of paper and a pencil out of his pocket and now straightened the paper out on the book and then began scribbling something on it.

»What are you doing?« Freddy asked

»I'm drawing.«

»What are you drawing?«

K didn't answer and when Freddy tried to get a peek of it, K turned the book so that he couldn't.

»So?« Freddy asked after a while.

»You'll see,« K said, all sunken into his work.

Finally he finished, set down the pencil and looked at it once again from a little further back.

»I would have given you real ones but since it's winter ...,« he said and then handed the paper, together with the book, to Freddy.

Freddy took it, looked at it and smiled.

»You never told me you could draw.«

»Do you see what it is?«

»Of course I do,« Freddy said, quieter now, almost shy, then raised his head to look at him. »I won't.«

»Good,« K said, smiled and then got up. »Come on, we should get back if we want anything to eat.«

»I'm coming,« Freddy said but stayed behind for a moment, his eyes lingering on the paper in his hands. Then he slipped the drawing of a forget-me-not carefully between the pages of his book and hurried to join K on their way back to the hospital.

The train next day left around noon but the transport to the train station left early in the morning as the roads were bad and muddy at that since it was raining, just as if this was some mediocre romance novel with the sky crying thin strings of drizzling rain and everything.

Shortly before his departure K pulled Freddy aside one last time.

»I've been thinking. This is a little silly maybe, but ... Well it's like this. I've heard that I'm probably going to do some youth training or perhaps even office work of some kind. Anyway I'm not going to go back to actual war because apparently having only one eye makes me a useless cripple and I'm guessing that you're not either with your injury and I was thinking that probably I'm going to need an assistant with whatever it is I'm going to be doing and I thought that I might perhaps even recommend someone who I think will be fit for the job and since they have so much other stuff to worry about they might even accept my recommendation. So what do you think? Should I recommend someone myself?«

Freddy, his face reddened, lowered his eyes but grinned. »Yes, you should,« he said softly. »You definitely should.«

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **G l o s s a r y**  
>  **Abendbrot** _lit. evening bread;_ meal eaten in the evening, traditionally indeed consisting of bread  
>  **Doppelkopf** _lit. double head;_ a popular German card game  
>  **Trommelfeuer** _lit. drumfire;_ massive, continuous, and rapid firing of artillery  
> 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which some letters and a telegram are sent.

_Hrn.  
Freddy Finkel  
18 Bad Wackerach  
Im Wängartshang 7_

_Dear Freddy,  
I think you must have arrived home by now? If not I hope this letter will find you as soon as you will get there. I hope your family is well? How is the baby? Have you brought yourself to 'looking at it' already? Around here everything is a little dull. I'm still in Röditz and have been spending most of the time working on the house. I've hired a young lad to help because I won't finish if I do everything on my own. However, he's very short-sighted (that's why he hadn't go to war) and not always that much of a help either. But who am I to talk. Did I tell you I stopped wearing the eye patch? It's a really odd feeling, I feel positively naked. Also I think I've just understood now that the eye really is gone. Well, blind I mean. (Odd feeling using that word, too.) When I was still wearing the bandage and then the eye patch there was always a reason for that I couldn't see with it, but now? I also feel like people are looking at it when I go out, although I know that's probably not true. But I'm babbling along here, sorry. It's just that I miss talking to you...  
How is your injury? Did you get through the transport home alright? I hope it didn't take too long? But it probably did, right?  
My holiday is going to end next month and all I know so far is that I'm going to instruct in a short training module for new recruits in Nürnberg. It's three separate groups in one week. So each group gets about 2 and a half day of training... for serving at the front. Well. But that's just for the one week. Tomorrow I'm going to go to Falkenheim to talk to the guys at the Wehrmacht office there because funnily enough it's quite possible that I'm going to be send there! To good old Falkenheim! They're sending people to the front now who have been previously categorised as _frontuntauglich _so there's some posts to be filled. But as soon as I know anything for sure I'll let you know! Have you heard anything? How long will your holiday be? I suppose you got an extra recovery holiday, too? Have they told you anything about after that? Is there a possibility you'd have to go back to the front??  
Have I mentioned how dull it is here? Right now I'm sitting in the garden in the sun (which is actually very nice, I think I haven't felt warm since last September!) my neighbour's cows are making a terrible noise, I guess they might be calving? Or they did calve and it's the calves being so loud, I don't know. Anyway it gives the place a very rural touch. Just in case you forgot you're in the middle of nowhere. There's also a woodpecker who wakes me up every morning at 6.30 sharp. But then I don't really sleep anyway.  
I have to go because Bruno (that's the kid's name who's helping me out) is about to arrive any minute now. Yesterday we started fixing the roof and miraculously so, so far neither of us has fallen off!  
Hoping to hear from you soon and that you are well!  
_

_Yours. K.  
_

_P.S.: There's so many flowers blooming in the garden now, dandelion and violets and so many forget-me-nots!!!_

—

_Herr Hptm.  
Kurt Klenzendorf  
13a Röditz (bei Falkenheim)  
Dorfstraße 5_

__

__

_Dear K,  
I arrived home but last week and what a surprise it was that there was a letter from you waiting for me already!!  
Everything and everyone in Bad Wackerach is well but I passed through Frankfurt on my way here (yes, the journey home was a pain in the arse!!) and what a sight! It's a battlefield, all _zerbombt _! But, thankfully, all here is well. My mother has been very glad to see me as you can imagine and it's quite hard to escape her for just a few minutes, so sorry I haven't written earlier, but I wanted to do it properly.  
My mother has saved up so much food for me, I think I haven't eaten as much in the entire last year as I did in the past week. I wonder if you'll even recognise me when (if?!) we meet again, all round and chubby! Well, it's very good to be home. To have my room, my books, my clothes! It's almost as if time has stood still here, as if nothing has happened in the meantime. It's sunny here, too and the hills and the vineyards look so beautiful, everything is becoming green again! I didn't realise how much I missed all this until now that I'm back here.  
However, we've already had _Fliegeralarm _three times since I arrived here. Luckily we have a deep and, I hope, quite solid cellar where we can go and even spend the night if necessary. But it's still terrifying. To sit down there, the children (my sister has come from Mannheim to stay at my mother's house with her children to flee the air raids there) not really understanding what is going on, half of the time thinking it's all a very hilarious game and the other half crying, to hear the sirens and then them howling past above us. And so many of them! Hundreds!! My mother told me they sometimes even come in the middle of the day. It's the Brits mostly but also some_ Amis _. But so far they've never attacked Wackerach, just flown past towards the bigger cities. I hope they'll always consider it too small and insignificant a place. We don't have any industry here, no army bases or anything like that, just healing water and some wine, haha! But anyway, it's not as idyllic as it has been here, too.  
And yes, I have seen the baby (it's from my other sister though), a girl by the way – Waltraud. And, what can I say? She is very cute. No, but seriously, I kind of feel for her. What a world to be born into.  
No, you haven't told me that you're not wearing the patch any more. I hope you kept it though, I do want to see you in it!  
And that's great news about Falkenheim, isn't it? Well if it really works out. Yes, I'm going to have a couple of weeks of holidays. But it depends on what the doctor here says. But it's a lot better, the wound has always been a little infected but now I think it's healing quite fine. I have no idea if they would send me back to the front but I think they might. There was a guy in my unit who had spent the entirety of 1942 at several hospitals because of severe abdominal wounds and well, he was out there again.  
I have to go now, _Mittagessen _is ready as my mother tells me. She insists to send you greetings from her, so: many greeting from my mother!  
Hope to see you soon.  
_

_Freddy_

_P.S.: Your garden sounds lovely! (I put your drawing up in my room!!)_

—

_Hrn. Freddy Finkel  
18 Bad Wackerach  
Im Wängartshang 7_

_Dear Freddy,  
I'm so glad to hear you're home! Not so glad about the air raids, though, I hope they'll stick to not attacking your town. Here you sometimes hear them in the distance but so far we didn't have any alarms. Also so relieved your injury is doing well!! I hope you're not in too much pain anymore?  
I'm almost finished in the house now but of course this is a bad time to sell a house. However there will be some people coming to look at it next week. It's a curious feeling – to really let go of this place. I wish you could see it once before I sell it. I never cared much about the village and also the house – in the past 20, 30 years I couldn't be far away enough from it. But still it does carry a lot of memories. Time hasn't really past in here in the last 30 years. There's still my room, and even my brother's. We used it as a guest room after he died but still my mother mostly kept it the way he left it. It still has the same furniture and there are even some of his books still on the shelves. There's also a lot of my old stuff around. Toys and boxes full of (quite bad) old drawings. I've also discovered my father's letters to my mother he sent her from the war. To think – he was just a little younger back then than I am now and how little and how much has changed. I always considered my father old when he went to war, and when he died. And now I am already older than him and I don't even know what I'm trying to say by this. I guess it only means that I am old. Time's a funny thing. And home's a funny thing, too, gets you all sentimental, doesn't it? It's just everything here, from the water butt outside to the creaks on the stairs – everything screams home! Also the trees in the garden, the dog house where our dog Hannelore used to live (please don't ask me why we gave her such a human name?) and my father's workshop which still has all his rusty tools in it...  
But all this can't be very interesting to you. So, sorry for boring you with it. It's just what's on my mind these days. Maybe I can still show it to you some day and you'll see what it's all about and where little Kurtchen ran about and played war with sticks for guns. Someone should have told him to stick to that.  
Anyway I'm moving to Falkenheim next week because I really got a position there and I'll see what I can do about you as soon as I'll be there!!  
There's so much more I wish I could tell you and talk to you about but some things are just not for letters.  
Hoping you and your lot are still well (so glad to hear you got to meet little Waltraud – what a horrible name though!), greetings back to your mother (what have you told her about me?!??)  
_

_Yours. K.  
_

_P.S.: I already put my new address on the envelope so please write me back there!_

—

_Hrn. Hptm.  
Kurt Klenzendorf  
13a Falkenheim  
Weberstr. 27_

_Dear K,  
how great that it worked out with the job in Falkenheim! What exactly will you be doing there? I still haven't heard anything. Would I have to apply for any position in Falkenheim or will you take care of that?  
And I can understand what you write about your house. If I were to sell this place – I couldn't! Even if it's not all pleasant memories. And please, what is on your mind is never boring to me! Tell me all about it! I wish I could see the house someday. And I wish you could come here someday, too. You'd have to be here in late summer. When everything is so green but starting to turn reddish. And when there's the grape harvest! We'd have to wander along the Rhein. Have you ever been there? It's almost ridiculously beautiful. With the hills and all the old castles. When there's mist lingering down in the valleys. It really takes your breath away. (When you can bring yourself to caring about landscapes again until then that is!) I wish I could really believe all this. But there's always hoping, isn't there?  
How is your new place? Do you have a flat in Falkenheim now? Is the weather also so nice over there? Here we're having one cloudless day after the other, it's almost like summer. So I just lie around the garden a lot and read.  
Yesterday I had a little row with my sister because she had apparently found the children playing 'shooting the Brits', 'throwing aerial bombs at London', 'blowing up Russians' and other oddly specific and quite graphic games (they also did set fire to the lawn a little bit when dropping incendiary bombs on Moscow apparently), all of which, so she said, they had never done before. Of course it had to be me who had taught them, because I had just come back from war? Bold to assume I would have played with them?! Also I don't really get what the fuss is about. That's how the world is! And it's literally what they will be learning in school. Well, as nice as it is to be home, I also remember now what I didn't enjoy about it, especially when my sisters were still living at home!  
But I guess she's a little bit stressed out, too. We recently learned that her husband is in Russian captivity. But that's the only thing we know, she hasn't heard from him personally in months. So I guess despite all we can be glad we're home at least.  
Have to go now, we're going to visit some relatives (I would so much rather stay home writing to you!) and my mother sends greetings again! (I told her nothing but the truth – that I met you in the hospital and that we're friends and that you might get me a job in training or administration and if that works out I think she will personally award you with the Knight's cross – with Golden Oak Leaves, Swords, and Diamonds and maybe a little cream topping, too!)  
Til then.  
_

_Freddy_

—

_Hrn. Freddy Finkel  
18 Bad Wackerach  
Im Wängartshang 7_

_Dear Freddy,  
I can't write so much today. Just wanted to tell you that I have formally recommended you for a junior position here which would be basically something like my assistant! Are you still on sick leave? I wrote that you'd be able to take the position as soon as you'd have fully recovered which was be to be expected soon.  
I have my own office now and there's a lot of paperwork to do and meetings to attend but I also do training modules occasionally, too. But I will hopefully be able to tell you about all that in person soon!  
Sorry I can't answer you properly, but please keep writing. Your letters are always the main event of the week (the month, the century!) for me around here!  
All the best._  


_K._

—

HERR FREDDY FINKEL  
18 BAD WACKERACH  
IM WÄNGARTSHANG 7 =

YOU HAVE THE JOB SO GLAD LETTER FOLLOWS = K +

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I decided to make these letters their own chapter because idk... it made sense somehow. However this decision has messed up my chapter plan so possibly there'll be a chapter more. But I'll keep it at 7 for now, who knows what else is going to happen to the chapter plan?!  
> Also I finally rewatched the film and boy, did I misunderstand the timeline of the film! (Still not entirely sure I understand it... framed by Jojo's age, the time span should be roughly half a year but it somehow begins in summer and ends in May? [insert gif of woman confused by math] anyway...) I mean it's not really that essential but bear with me while I have to rethink some things in the new (3rd) chapter which will be set during the time the film is set. And have these letters in the meantime. (:  
> (There are also some details in the first chapter really off now, for example the news K reads. '...ammunition fired by the Americans on the western front', well lol, this is before the Normandy Landings/D-Day now. So I might have to fix some things there, too. Welp.)  
>  **edit** : Okay, actually nothing in the film's timeline adds up. Just judging by the seasons I'd say the time span has to be roughly from August - May. The main part of the film (up to the Gestapo coming to Jojo's house) is set during summer or late summer/autumn (people wearing skirts and shorts etc....), then when Rosie dies it's winter and afterwards we see Jojo collecting firewood in deep snow etc. So I thought all clear here but! When imaginary Hitler talks to Jojo just after Jojo has discovered Elsa, which by the season theory would be in late summer of 1944 probably, he refers to the Stauffenberg assassination attempt as "last year" when it actually took place in July 1944. I'm gonna cry. I can't work like this. Well, I'll just have to stop trying to make sense out of this and find my own way to bullshit myself through this mess. :')
> 
>  **G l o s s a r y**  
>  **Fliegeralarm** _lit. flyer (=airplane) alarm;_ air raide alarm  
>  **frontuntauglich** unfit for the front line in a war  
>  **Mittagessen** _lit. midday eating/food;_ lunch, traditionally the most important and only warm meal of the day  
>  **zerbombt** destroyed by bombings


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which K and Freddy meet a boy and then a girl and then the world ends.

It had been the Führer's birthday just a couple of days ago and the streets were still full of flags and banners and decorations when Freddy first arrived in Falkenheim. He had finally gotten a new uniform, and a black Wound Badge was now attached to the brand new fabric next to the Infantry Assault Badge he had earned himself last year when he had still been a _Gefreiter_. It was warm and his right hand carrying his suitcase was sweaty—but that might have also been due to the nervousness he felt, mainly in his stomach which seemed to have twisted itself into an aching mess. Just yesterday evening when he had went to bed early, all his things packed, checked a dozen times for if he really hadn't forgotten anything, it had been a gleeful excitedness he had felt and he had fallen asleep smiling, not able to wait for it to be morning, to get on the train, the train which would take him here, to Falkenheim, where K was. But then with every kilometre that he had gotten closer, his gleeful excitedness had turned more and more into worried agitation. He hadn't been able to eat a single one of the _Butterbrote_ his mother had prepared for him (none of which contained actual butter of course). Instead he had pulled out K's letters, just to make sure that he hadn't imagined it all.

Held carefully so that only he himself could see, he had read them, over and over again. It was there. Not very plainly of course, letters could always end up in the wrong hands after all, but still there, between the lines, and in everything he wrote. That he liked him, thought of him, wanted him to come to Falkenheim. But how would it be when they met again? Maybe he would change his mind? Maybe it wouldn't work out? It had been such a long time ago that they had last seen each other, and such a short time that they had seen each other at all.

Now it was just a couple of hundred metres through the cobblestone streets of Falkenheim separating him from meeting him again. Clutched in his other hand which was also carrying a little brown box was the piece of paper on which he had noted the address K had given him—although by now he already knew it by heart.

»Finkel, Freddy. Freddy Finkel. I've been transferred here. I'm to assist Captain Klenzendorf,« he said, the words falling out of his mouth all jumbled, or so it seemed to him and for a moment he worried if he had even been making any sense to the guard at the local Wehrmacht base where he had now finally arrived.

But the guard just nodded. »Right,« he said after having checked his papers and then explained him the way before returning to the newspaper he had been reading.

»He's in a meeting,« informed him the secretary, a young brunette with a very earnest expression, and gestured towards a bench in the hallway. »You can wait here.«

And that's were Freddy sat now, a little forlorn, regarding the huge map of Germany and Europe that was hung on the wall in front of him. Little markers were set where the current front lines were located, some markers having little labels with their division number on them, surely the divisions of the local _Wehrkreis_. It was an old, stuffy building, an old villa, now occupied by the Wehrmacht for administration and it was almost completely quiet except for some muffled voices emerging from some place he couldn’t exactly locate and the continuous chattering of the secretary’s typewriter. His hands still were sweaty and he wiped them off on his trousers every so often while he squirmed on the wooden bench, shifting his weight as it was growing harder and harder under him with every minute.

Then finally, after what had seemed like an eternity one of the doors swung open, loud chatter from the emerging men filling the hallway immediately.

It took a moment for K to notice Freddy who had stood up, looking at him sheepishly, trying to catch his attention, unsure whether and how to announce himself.

»Finkel!« he exclaimed then, as soon as he had spotted him, a wide grin spreading on his face for a split second, then he mustered a more dignified expression. »You have arrived!«

They both felt awfully exposed, half a dozen men surrounding them and everyone's attention, at least momentarily, on the new guy.

»Uh, yes. Captain Klenzendorf, good to see you again,« Freddy stammered, every muscle of his face busy withholding a too gleeful, besotted grin, and shook K's extended hand.

»You know each other already?« one of the other men asked.

»Yes. We met briefly in the east. In hospital to be precise,« K explained.

»Well, yes, welcome to Falkenheim, _Herr Unteroffzier_ ,« someone said and then Freddy had to shake some more hands.

It took until early afternoon for them to finally be able to exchange a few words in private, the rest of the time there was always someone else around, while Freddy just followed K everywhere, glued to his side, not knowing what else to do, and feeling a little superfluous. Although they did talk—K asked him how his trip had been and Freddy told him and then K said some other thing and Freddy replied and so it went on. But it felt weirdly unreal, faked, almost an act.

»I'm sorry, I have another meeting in an hour but maybe you can just go and get settled?« K said, his voice low, as they were finally alone in his office, the door to the hallway still a little bit open though. He had stretched out his arm and laid a hand on Freddy’s upper arm. Freddy felt it there, warm and heavy and just nodded slowly. It was odd, being alone all of a sudden and yet not able to properly speak or touch. »I'll send the secretary to show you to your flat. Well, it's just two rooms actually but there's only one other tenant and the landlady. It all seemed quite nice. I hope you like it. I picked it out myself but there wasn't much to choose from.«

Their eyes just lingered on each other for a moment, as if trying to convey something else, something unspoken although neither of them was sure what they would have said when they really would have been alone.

»Thanks,« Freddy said finally, »I'm sure it's going to be fine.«

»Okay, I um …,« K lowered his voice even further, »you'll hear from me. See you later, tonight. I'll send you a message. You don't have to come in today again. Just get settled and you'll properly start tomorrow.«

Five minutes to seven sharp K's doorbell rang. He had sent the secretary later in the day, inviting the new sub-officer over for dinner to his place at seven. He had thought it might give the entire thing a slightly more official air, someone else delivering the message, knowing about it. He swore and hurried to his bedroom to finish dressing himself. Damned stupid German manner to arrive early, who the fuck had thought up that kind of shit? He hadn't dressed nicely in civilian clothes in ages—during his holidays when he for once hadn't been wearing his uniform he'd put on just some crumpled, thick shirt and an old pair of trousers but of course that wouldn't have done for tonight. He checked himself in the mirror. He was wearing the only nice suit that more or less still fit him. Then he sighed, put out his cigarette, took a sip from his flask and then hurried to open—only to find Freddy standing in the hallway in his uniform, which made him now feel underdressed and overdressed at the same time.

Freddy was laden with stuff. A box balanced in one hand, the other one clutching two bottles of what seemed to be wine and something else at once.

»Well, hello there,« K laughed, »what's all this?« But he didn't even wait for an answer and just manoeuvred Freddy inside, anxious to close the door behind them both.

»Well, this is,« Freddy began immediately as K had closed the door behind him as he handed him the box, »from my mother. Please don't laugh, but she insisted. It's a cake. Rhubarb crumble. Well, I mean apart from the rhubarb most ingredients aren't real but it's still good, she's very talented at creating delicious things out of barely anything.«

He stopped there, having gone slightly rosy around the cheeks, realising that he had been talking to cover up his nervousness.

»Why, that is so nice?« K said, raising the top of the box a little to glance inside.

»And this is,« Freddy continued, his voice a bit smaller now, »a wine from the Pfalz,« he handed K the larger bottle, »and this is vineyard peach liquor. My mother made that one too.«

»Wow, thanks, but you really didn’t have to bring all this,« K said, smiling though, now himself laden with Freddy’s gifts.

But Freddy shook his head. »I really had to. You don’t know my mother. She thought this was too little still.«

»Ah right, didn’t you say something about a Knight’s Cross?«

» _Ja_ , sorry. She’s still working on that one,« Freddy said with a crooked grin.

»Well,« K said, putting down the things on the sideboard in the hallway, »until then,« he made a step towards Freddy, »I’d content myself with …« He paused, his face now lingering inches from Freddy’s who was grinning shyly now and without continuing to speak K just made one final step closer and then pressed a kiss onto Freddy’s lips.

It was a chaste kiss, no tongue, just their lips touching, noses bumping into each other clumsily.

»God, I missed you,« K said, as their lips had parted again, his forehead leaning against Freddy’s, a smile in his voice, »I haven't seen a friendly face since … well, since I last saw you actually. And now you’re here. Here.« His voice sounded as though he couldn’t actually believe it.

He took a step backwards to look at Freddy.

»Yes,« Freddy smiled, »I’m here.«

They looked at each other for another moment.

»Well, I hope you're hungry,« K said then, in a more casual voice. »I had my landlady make us dinner.«

»So, what do you think of Falkenheim?« K asked after they had finished dinner—potatoes, red cabbage and beef with which they had had the wine Freddy had brought. They had just chatted along, about this and that, everything that had happened in between and that they hadn't told each other in their letters already.

»It's alright I guess,« Freddy said vaguely, not having considered Falkenheim as a town or a place for even a second.

»To be honest, there really isn't much going on here. And the job is … well … You won't win yourself any more of these.«

He gestured towards the badges at Freddy's uniform.

»Oh, that's alright. I don't care.« It didn't sound fully convincing and K smiled at that. Had he still been Freddy's age he surely would have cared a great deal. It was so essential, this stuff. Whatever asshole or whiney person a soldier was, a good assortment of medals was always a guarantor of respect and prestige. It wasn't easy to truly not care about it and surely he himself wasn't succeeding quite as much at it as he was admitting to himself or would have liked to.

»Well, the idea was for us to be able to see each other, wasn't it?« Freddy said then, wisely.

K sighed and smiled contently. »Yes, it was.«

»So, it’s all well.«

They passed on to dessert after that, both having a piece of Freddy’s mother’s cake and a bit of the peach liquor.

»You can't down this like whatever it is you carry around in your flask, you know,« Freddy told him before pouring him the amber-golden liquid. »You have to savour this.«

»Alright,« K said obediently, leant back in his chair and then raised his glass to toast to Freddy. »On,« he began, pondering for a moment, »on the Russians for ending us both up here.«

Freddy raised an eyebrow, then casted him a sceptical look. »Okay,« he said, laughing a little now, »if you say so.«

»I say so. It's the truth isn't it?«

»I guess. Well... to the Russians then.«

They both took a sip and K made an approving sound.

»This is really good.« He took another sip, hummed, leant back in his chair and then stretched his legs out towards Freddy under the table and then swung his feet up into Freddy's lap.

Freddy looked down, astonished and for a moment seemed to be unsure what to do with the sudden presence of K’s woolly-socked feet there. Then he tentatively placed one hand on one of K’s ankles, letting his thumb stroke the back of his foot. For a while they just sat there, sipping their liquor. They had both taken off their jackets, rolled back the sleeves of their shirts, comfortably at ease in each other’s presence.

»I’m so glad you’re here, Freddy,« K said after a while, wriggling his toes a little against Freddy.

Freddy smiled. »Yes, I’m glad too.«

»It was so dull and lonely during the past weeks. Really, you can’t even imagine,« he said, pouting now a little exaggeratedly.

»Aw,« Freddy made, »well, I missed you too.«

»Did you?« K asked, something else, something flirtatious in his voice now.

Freddy nodded, his hand still resting on K’s foot and blushed, suddenly aware of the closeness of K’s feet to his groin.

»C’mere,« K said after a minute and Freddy obliged, slowly heaving K’s feet out of his lap and then getting up.

K patted a hand into his lap, indicating Freddy to sit down there and Freddy did.

»Hi,« K said, his voice barely a whisper, and bit his lip, smiling.

»Hi,« Freddy echoed.

K had put his arms around Freddy, caressing his back and now, slowly but determinedly pressed his lips onto Freddy’s. They both tasted sweet now, of peach and a hint of rhubarb and both hummed contently as they deepened their kissing.

It was a little odd at first. To be so close again, to kiss, to embrace. To feel the other one's body so close. The physicality of the other which over the last months had become more and more unreal, like a dream, being yanked back into reality, memories of touches, smells and tastes flooding back in.

»I thought about this,« K mumbled between kisses, breathing heavily, »about you. All the time, every night I went to bed, I thought about you. Is this weird? To say this? God, but it's true. I missed this so much. You.«

He had started unbuttoning Freddy's shirt, his fingers tracing his chest where it wasn't hidden under his undershirt, then his thumbs found his nipples through the soft cotton.

Freddy sighed, almost unable to speak, arousal coiling in his guts, feeling K's warmth and his body so close and in a way that he hadn't ever before, not in the dark cold where it had been that they had been together before. »Yeah, me too,« he managed to say. »I thought about you too.«

»So,« K said, kissing him once more, »should we take this to the bedroom then?«

And so they did.

Pushing and pulling, they moved to K’s bedroom where K pulled Freddy towards the bed and, without breaking the kiss, manoeuvred them both down onto it, then letting them both topple over into the sheets. He chuckled contently and then resumed unbuttoning Freddy’s shirt, tucking at it lightly to remove it from under his trousers and then began to push up Freddy’s undershirt.

»Stop,« Freddy murmured, breaking their kiss, but K didn’t hear.

»Stop,« Freddy said again, louder now and pulled away.

K froze now too and lifted his hands away from Freddy.

»Sorry. What did I do?«

Freddy sat up, lowering his shirt where K had pushed it up already and shook his head.

»Nothing.«

»Then what is it?« K asked worriedly.

Freddy hesitated for a moment.

»It looks horrible,« he said then, quietly.

»What does?«

»My scar,« Freddy said, leaving the ‘of course’ implied.

»Oh Freddy,« K said. »I don’t care.«

»But I do.«

»So? What do we do about that?« K asked with a sigh.

»Could we … maybe … turn off the light?«

K made a grimace. »But I want to look at you, Freddy. I want to see your face,« he said and tried a smirk, »and other things.«

Freddy smiled, casting down his eyes but sighed.

»So maybe … do you mind if I keep this on?« he asked, tugging at his undershirt.

K shook his head. »I guess not … if you insist.«

»Sorry. I know it's silly,« Freddy said, biting his lip.

»No,« K hurried to say, »don't apologise. It is as it is. It’s just … are you sure it's that bad? I swear I won't mind.«

But Freddy nodded. »I just really, really hate it. It's disgusting. I barely look at it myself.«

K sighed softly and extended his hand to gently stroke a lock of Freddy's blonde hair which had fallen into his face back to where it belonged.

»So are you okay with it like this?« Freddy asked.

»Well, how couldn't I?« K said softly. »You’re the boss.«

»Thank you,« he said quietly, hesitating for a moment. »And also could you … not touch it either?«

»I won't.«

»Good.« A little smile grew around Freddy's lips and then, slowly regaining his confidence, he pulled K back into a kiss which turned ever so much filthier as he slowly but forcefully pushed him down into the cushions.

It was glorious. To make love in a bed, an actual bed. To disappear under the covers together. To kiss and caress and cuddle. To savour and clutch and hold. No more hushed physicalities exchanged in the dark but, finally, proper love making.

Parting later in the night was painful but of course Freddy couldn't have stayed—lest any neighbours would see him in the morning. They also couldn't make this a nightly activity, for the same reason. But at least once a week K's neighbours saw the young sub-officer come to have dinner or play a round of cards or discuss the war situation or whatever else at the captain's place and when the door had closed behind him, behind it, inside the captain’s flat this little rare time of intimate togetherness was cherished ever so much more.

And so over the following weeks and months they just kind of fell into place. Soon neither of them could imagine how a life before this, before them, should have been. Lonely and dull and colourless it surely had been. They spent most work days together, planning and giving training courses to new recruits and lectures to aspiring officers, seeing new soldiers, barely men, off to the front lines, communicated with the local party base, the Gestapo, the local authorities and administration, writing reports, doing paperwork. All in all they were actually covering several jobs at once, but since these days every man whose body was still somewhat intact and who wasn't lucky enough to be in a reserved occupation was dragged off into war there weren't many people left to deal with the things here.

They fell into a smooth dynamic, K doing most of the actual planning and thinking and responsible stuff and Freddy doing whatever there was to help. And also apart from work they somehow just harmonised, and despite all the dreariness around them they were good-humoured most of the time, soon discovered their shared love for music and thus spent an awful lot of time dancing to the gramophone in K’s apartment, always found something to giggle about and soon everyone knew them as an odd yet inseparable duo—none of them suspecting however how much of a duo they actually made, both having found in the other a place where they could just _be_.

And it was only when K thought Freddy didn't see, that he allowed his face to shift into a more grim expression that went beyond the usual grumpiness and displayed cynicism towards everything.

It didn't look good for Germany, (war-wise; it hadn't looked good for Germany generally for many, many years) and that didn't even particularly worry him, or: it wasn't the fact that Germany might be losing the war that worried him, it was more complicated than that and maybe even the other way around. It worried him that the war just kept going on and on and on. He wasn't exactly sure since when this had been clear to him but it had grown over months and years, the understanding that the only way to end this war, the endless killing and death and hunger and despair, was the defeat of Germany. There was simply no way they could win this, especially since there didn't even seem to be an end to what Hitler and his minions wanted to achieve.

There were the things they had been and were still telling people in their speeches—words that enthralled, elated, embraced them. How all of this was because of _them_ , for _them_. How there would be a better society, without class, poverty, misery. How to be German would become a matter of pride and honour again, how finally they were to be empowered again, and respected, envied, by the entire world. How they would make Germany and the Germans strong and proud and great again. Giving people the glorious feeling of, finally, being cared about, understood, _seen_.

And then there were also those other things they wanted. Madness it was. Conquest fantasies bordering on insanity. Once they would've taken Europe, would that be enough? Africa, Asia, America—everything they wanted, the entire world, ultimately, he was sure. They would never rest and there was simply no way they would succeed, they already had the rest of the world against them.

So defeat was the only way out of this and with every lost battle, with every metre of the front lines retreating, defeat was coming nearer and so all that, ultimately, was a good thing. Even if that was sometimes still hard to admit.

He'd always been torn between his wish for these brown-shirted, red-armbanded clowns to vanish to wherever they had come from, for the war and all the misery it brought to end and his purely egoistic wish to be in it. To be out there, to do the one thing he knew, to be of use, to function. The big picture, future, past and any other reality vanishing into insignificance in front of the acuteness of the present. Just you and your comrades, one for all and all for one. The bare battle of surviving, to take a town, to defend a position, a manoeuvre succeeding, a fired bullet hitting its target.

But now that this had been taken away from him there remained barely anything in him wishing for this war to continue, or for Germany to win it.

It was only that all was going so slowly. That they were still sending men into death as if it would change anything for the better. On the contrary it was making everything worse. Because really, besides the horridness of the present it was the aftermath he feared most. What would happen, to this country, to the people, to himself, when the other ones would have finally gotten hold of them. And with every day the war continued, with every day they kept terrorising the world, the prospect of that what they would do with them was becoming gimmer and grimmer. And all the while the prospects of this country ever being free and whole again were dimming, crumbling away, most literally, with every aerial attack, with every city razed to the ground.

But he didn't tell any of this to Freddy. It was just between sighs, before taking a sip of his flask, or when he lay awake at night, with Freddy gone, the warmth he had left on the sheets cooling away, that he thought about these things. It was hard to tell what Freddy's standing was in all this. He mostly seemed to have just arranged himself with the situation, neither being over-enthusiastic, convinced of German by-law superiority, nor being particularly pessimistic. He seemed to be still believing, or hoping at least, that Germany could win this. In a couple of months perhaps, or next year, or maybe the year after. He was just a little doubtful sometimes how they would manage to do everything they said, wondering how everything could be doing so well if evidence seemed to prove the opposite. But he wasn't seeing the things they told everyone, the enthusiastic news reports, the speeches, the pamphlets for what they were—blatant lies.

But then, K thought, it didn't seem like Freddy thought about all that too much anyway. He was more about now, today, the present. He envied that sometimes. His seeming mindlessness, carelessness, perhaps naivety even. Taking that away from him, dragging him into his pits of despair, what would have been the point? There would still be enough time for despair, he feared.

And also—he would have never fully admitted this to himself—, there was a little something inside him that actually feared telling Freddy all that he really thought. Less for fear of Freddy reporting him but more for fear of Freddy disagreeing with him, of him thinking ill of him, of something between them breaking. He had no actual reason to believe that Freddy particularly admired the Nazis, let alone considered himself one—but did one ever know? Could one ever be sure these days of what someone else really thought? Ever be sure who to trust, who to confide in? (However, he thought, in a way he had already decided to trust Freddy, put his entire existence into his hands, just by being with him.)

Anyway he pushed these thoughts aside whenever he could and instead settled into the fragile harmony, happiness even, of their newly established day to day life which went, all things considered, reasonably well.

Until one weekend in late summer.

Someone had had the great idea to send them to a training weekend of the _Jungvolk_ and _Jungmädel_ children. To give warfare training to children. Apparently someone had thought that it wasn’t enough for the children anymore to just go camping, sing some songs, play some scouting games and get a little more indoctrinated—no, they needed to see some actual soldiers, a withered captain who had seen a lot and a young and once thriving sub-officer who would tell them how actual war worked, preparing them for what undoubtedly would come soon. They'd sure enough not actually send the children into war just now but even they must have understood that the war would sooner or later just arrive at the children’s door steps.

K and Freddy had exchanged a long look when they had been told, neither of them in the least keen to spend a weekend with a hoard of ten- to fourteen-year-olds and teaching them how to fight, with Freddy's concerns leaning more towards the first and K's concerns leaning more towards the latter part.

But it was decided and so they packed their bags and joined a few counsellors, a bunch of supporting _Hitlerjugend_ boys and two hundred excitedly buzzing, screaming children on a trip to a nearby campsite, all picturesquely located between green hills and pine forests.

And it went well at first—well, as well as something like that can go; it's one thing to tell grown, or soon-to-be grown men how to kill, but teaching all that to children and to have them further burn books, chant dubious songs and all the while seeing the gleeful expressions on their faces, not understanding at all what they are doing—none of that could be in any way part of something that was going well. But apart from that, everything went as planned, they made a little show of it for the children, which was almost a little fun, and at the end of the day, quite literally, they at least got to share a tent, alone, just the two of them and even though of course they didn't _do_ anything there it was a treat to for once be able to fall asleep next to each other and wake up to the other one being there.

It was only on the second day that what was bound to happen when you added lethal weapons to a camp full of boisterous children, happened.

While they were instructing some older boys of the _Hitlerjugend_ how to throw hand grenades some _Jungvolk_ boy, for God only knows what reason, came out of nowhere sprinting towards K and, in an act of pure bravado, ripped a live hand grenade out of his hand, spurted away with it and then threw it, very badly, just for it to explode mere inches away from him.

There was a lot of blood and dismay and blood and screaming and blood. Some of the _Hitlerjugend_ boys had to sprint down to the nearest village to call an ambulance and it took ages for it to arrive. They accompanied the boy to the hospital where the doctors, gladly, stitched him back together and apart from some scratches in his face and a little limp he was going to be okay.

However the aftermath of the incident wasn’t so lenient with K and Freddy. A culprit had to be found and it couldn’t have been the person who had decided to bring hand grenades to a children’s camp, so they settled on K—and on Freddy since, after all, he had been there too.

K was informed, very matter-of-factly, that the two of them would be moved into the local _Deutsches Jungvolk_ , or short DJ, office since, as they informed him in a sub-clause, the local Wehrmacht base was to be merged in the course of reduction measures with the one from the next town anyway. Which made K think that in the end they had been probably waiting for a reason to get rid of them—because how supervisory neglect could lead to the transferral to a work place where there were basically always children going to be present surely had to be between them and God.

They worked in a much smaller space there, just a two-room facility basically, one office for them and one slightly larger outer room where the insufferable Fräulein Rahm, a raging Nazi, who had already accompanied them on the camp trip, had her desk. They kept some of their tasks from the old job, mostly the paper and communication work. But they didn’t do actual training anymore, just for the _Hitlerjugend_ boys they sometimes held training courses. So more than ever there was not really that much to do. And so a lot of time was spent actually doing nothing but listening to music, reading, having some of the cake they had the privilege of sometimes being provided with, or just chatting and being silly together. And all in all, despite the occasional muttering about how he was considered useless and had to entertain children instead of standing in the front lines, K was quite content. This was by far the most useless position he had ever held in the military which was by now all he wanted to achieve. It was only Freddy who sometimes seemed to be still concerned about doing a good job.

*

»What was that kid all about?« K said.

They were in the changing room of the local swimming pool and had just given a lesson to some _Hitlerjugend_ boys in water warfare training (in case they ever needed to go to battle in a swimming pool, as K had remarked) and the hand grenade boy, Johannes Betzler or, how everyone seemed to be calling him, Jojo, had been there too for his remedial exercise.

»Hm?« Freddy said, unsure which of the dozens of kids K could possibly be talking about.

»That grenade kid. Jojo Betzler.« K lowered his voice. »Why did he ask about Jews like that? Didn't you think it was a little weird?«

Freddy shrugged. »He's a child. Children say funny shit all the time.«

But K frowned. »I don't know.«

He had approached them, a little shyly, as they had been sitting at the poolside and had very determinedly started to question them about Jews—how to recognise them and what to do if he ever saw one. K had, wisely, told him to tell them, himself and Freddy, to take care of it, lest he would run to people who were really in charge and tell them about whatever he was on about. But it still had struck him as very odd. How did a boy like him develop an interest in Jews like that all of a sudden? He knew him a little better by now because Jojo’s mother had brought him around the DJ office after he had been released from the hospital and had demanded that they would find something to do for him until he would be able to attend school again. (Her request had been preceded by a well-placed knee strike between K’s legs for almost killing her son, as she had told him, which he hadn’t thought he deserved but hadn’t been able to resent her for either. He knew Rosie Betzler vaguely from his school days, an older cousin of hers had gone to school with him, and he remembered that she had even back then been a bold and sometimes slightly intimidating little girl. He had briefly met her around town on some occasions since he was back here as some of the few people he was still acquainted with were in turn acquainted with her. The last time he had seen her had been when she had seen Jojo off at the bus before they had departed to the disastrous camp weekend.)

Jojo was in many ways just an ordinary boy, born into a country full of red swastika flags and mass hysteria: frantic in his admiration for the _Führer_ , but at the same time strikingly naive and oblivious to what any of that Nazi business he was so obsessed with really was about. What did he know what a Jew even was? He probably imagined them to be some mythic monsters. How disappointed he would be to find out one day that they were actually just bog-standard humans, no different from himself. And how shattered would he be should he ever find out how much his own beloved mother was against all that he loved so fiercely, as K happened to know from reliable sources. Sure, maybe his interest was just part of all his Nazi obsession, paired with the boredom of not going to school … But to suddenly care about Jews like that … now? Were there even any Jews left, here in Falkenheim? Like many cities it had probably been proudly declared Jew-free at some point in the past after they had been all brought away—truck by truck, train by train, seen by everyone, noticed by barely anyone, as it would much later, curiously enough, turn out. So who cared about Jews anymore? The Russian (yes, _the_ Russian, that one single Russian, like the Germans liked to call an army of millions: _der Russe_ )—he was the threat of the hour. Violent, barbaric and approaching, inexorably approaching. But Jews? Why Jews? Something about that was very odd, K thought to himself and sighed.

Freddy in the meantime had turned away from him, stepped out of his swim suit, dried himself off and was now changing into his underwear, still anxious to not let him see his scar. But K didn’t and wouldn’t have looked anyway, he had tactfully averted his eyes. Then Freddy suddenly let out a laugh.

»Now will you look at this, _Herr_ Captain Klenzendorf.« He had turned around and motioned down towards his inner thighs and then lowered his voice. »I've got hickeys on my thighs. I went out there like this.«

K smiled a satisfied and slightly smug smile. »So? Do they have a name on them? Maybe you have a nice little lady friend?«

» _Ja_ , of course. Anyone would believe that.«

»Why not? You’re a pretty boy. I’m sure somewhere all the girls are lining up to steal you away from me.«

Freddy shook his head laughingly. »What nonsense. Is that why you work out like this?« He pointed towards the dumbbells K had been lifting while they had sat at the poolside, observing the kids. »To keep my eyes on you and away from all the girls? You are aware that I don’t care about girls in the slightest, right?«

»I know. I was merely joking, Freddy. But well, I have to keep myself in shape, don’t I? Now that I have … a … _friend_?« He smirked at him.

»I thought that’s when you can stop making an effort.«

»Oh,« K said, acting disappointed, »am I doing it wrong then? Can I actually grow a belly now?«

»You already have a belly,« Freddy told him unblinkingly.

K frowned. »Ow, Freddy. Wow. Don’t be so mean.«

But Freddy smiled. »No I … like it,« he said mischievously.

»Do you?« K asked sceptically.

»Yes, it's … nice and soft and ... I just like it, okay?«

K bit his lip and almost blushed at that, grinning slightly.

»Oh, you …,« he said, his gaze just swaying on Freddy's face for a moment. He looked so cute, with his crooked smile and his hair all fuzzy from the dampness and still a little flattened out from the silly bathing cap that was part of their swimming attire.

»Please make me not kiss you right now,« he whispered.

»There's no one here,« Freddy said. They had been the last ones to leave the pool, all the children and patients already having left.

But K shook his head. »There always might be.«

After another moment he broke their gaze and stepped away from Freddy, putting some physical distance between them and then hurried to dress himself. Being so close to each other, half naked, in a deserted public space—dangerous business that was. Even he only had that much self-control.

It had become evening when they finally stepped out of the building. It was light still and would be for a couple of hours but the streets had emptied, the shops closed.

»Think of me when you go to bed,« Freddy whispered when they said their goodbyes at the street corner where their ways parted.

»I assure you I will,« K said, his voice raw with yearning and frustration.

And he did, later in the evening, when he had gone to bed. He did think about Freddy. But then, as his mind sobered up, another thought crept back into it, the thought of that boy and his strange behaviour and it didn't leave him this time. Something was afoot, but he couldn't just grasp what.

*

One slow afternoon a couple of weeks later they were just hanging out in K's office. K had opened a bottle of champagne he had nicked from the Wehrmacht supplies when they had still been at the base and they were sharing it know, drinking it straight from the bottle because they didn't have any glasses or at least had been too lazy to set out to look for any.

»I'm sure you look great in pastel,« K had just said and was now taking Freddy in as if imagining him wearing a nice rose suit. He had complained that he had never seen Freddy in civilian clothes and Freddy had enthusiastically started to describe his wardrobe at home, all the nice suits he had there. He had been a tailor, as it turned out, before the war. Or at least he had worked at a tailor shop, had started to learn there and actually planned to open his own shop someday. But he never officially finished his studies with first the depression and then the war intervening. But he still had made suits for himself regularly, he had told K, rather nostalgically. Now you couldn’t buy fabric anywhere anymore and his best clothes remained home at his mother’s house, here he had only brought a couple of plain suits and shirts and jumpers. But even those he hadn't really worn so far, but instead had to wear this boring uniform all the time, as he sadly remarked.

»You know what,« K said after he had swallowed another huge gulp of champagne, »we should design new uniforms for the big final battle. Wonder weapon wonder uniforms,« he giggled to himself, »with fancy yet useful accessory. With sparkling fabric to dazzle the enemy and a radio blasting horrible music.«

Hitler had been maundering in a speech the other day about some secret wonder weapon which was to be released soon and which would be able to finally bring victory to Germany.

In stark contrast to that there had also been orders to now train the public—the women and the elderly, even the older children. Luckily that wasn't their job anymore but the plan was still included in a memo they had received a couple of days earlier in which they had been ordered to participate in helping plan the defence of the town for when the enemies would arrive there.

»It could be part of our defence strategy,« K continued. »Maybe we can even sell the idea to the _Führer_ , go into mass production with it. Make him _really_ proud.«

He stopped and his frivolous grin faded off his face for a split second because, though blurred through the alcohol, he suddenly realised the magnitude of what he had just said. He had never spoken like this to Freddy, they had never spoken like this—he still hadn’t dared to discuss politics with Freddy let alone to openly make fun of Hitler like this—and for a moment he feared that Freddy would be shocked by this or outraged even.

But Freddy just snorted and added a few ideas for accessories himself, not seeming to mind or even realise what K had said in the slightest. K smiled at him in the realisation of that. He had probably worried about all that in vain.

»What?« Freddy asked after he had paused speaking as he had seen the expression on K’s face.

»Nothing. I just really, really like you, you know?« K said and grinned at him foolishly.

»Okay … And I like you too,« Freddy said, attempting to make it a whisper but, being a little tipsy, not entirely succeeding.

They would have probably kissed at this hadn’t the door to the other room stood wide open. So instead they began to whisper sweet nothings into each other’s ears. Then something seemed to have crossed Freddy’s mind.

»You know you still haven't told me what you thought of me,« he said, »when you first saw me I mean.«

»Oh, Freddy, no. Not that again.«

»You promised me,« Freddy insisted.

»No. I did not.«

»Come on. Tell me. I want to know. How bad can it be?«

Freddy made a pout and looked at him with pleading eyes.

K sighed. »I … well, I thought that you … were … well, a little obvious maybe?«

»Obvious? Obvious how?«

»Just obvious. You know.«

Freddy frowned. »Isn't it so tedious to always put on an act? I really don't know how everyone else is doing it. I can't do that. And people either don't care or are way too dense anyway. So why bother?«

»I'm not putting on an act,« K said.

Freddy paused for moment, the last hint of a smile fading from his face. »Good for you,« he said then.

»Sorry, I didn't mean it that way.«

»No it's alright. You meant that I'm like a girl and you're not. I congratulate you.«

»No, Freddy. Please. That came out all wrong. I don't … Do you see now why I said you didn't want to know? I shouldn't have told you. It wasn’t … I didn’t mean it, okay?«

Freddy looked in the opposite direction.

»Hey, I'm sorry.«

»Is that really how you think of me? I'm sorry I've been bothering you with my obviousness then.«

»Shit, Freddy. I'm sorry. That is _not_ how I think of you. If anyone else said something like that about you I would … Jesus, I almost did. Sometimes I just … I don’t know … I just somehow start to think like _them_. Does that never happen to you? It's so stupid and shameful, I know. But sometimes I just can't help it. It's like there's that little K in my head who thinks like the rest of the world, horrible things, who wants me to want to belong, to be normal. But I'm not and you're not and that is a good thing.« He paused. »I know everything I say right now sounds stupid but I mean it. Do you believe me?«

Freddy shrugged. »I guess.«

»I really didn’t mean it in a bad way. I mean, I confess I probably did then, but that was the shitty part of me. Actual me isn’t like that. And I mean … you _are_ obvious, you _are_ different—or at least you are to me. But the point is, that is not a bad thing. That’s nothing bad. Or it shouldn’t be. You’re … I like you and want you just the way you are, okay?«

»Okay«, Freddy said, in a more conciliatory tone now.

»Do you forgive me?«

Freddy nodded.

»Sure?«

»Yes,« Freddy said. »It just … sounded really horrible at first. It’s … I mean you’re not the first person to tell me this. And it’s usually not meant in a nice way.«

»I know. I’m really sorry.«

»It’s okay, I know you didn’t mean it like that.«

»I didn’t. You’re … please don’t ever change.«

»Don’t you worry,« Freddy said, extra smugly. »I wasn’t going to.«

K laughed at that and Freddy, too, was smiling now.

Then K nudged his knee into Freddy’s.

»You know, maybe I lied a little too. Of course I do put on an act. To some extent at least. For example the entire day I have to act like I don't want to kiss you. And I do want to kiss you always. So it's not easy.«

Freddy rolled his eyes, but still blushed slightly at that.

»Aw no. I feel so bad for you. _Armes Kurtchen_.«

Their conversation came to an abrupt halt as Fräulein Rahm approached them gleefully, entering the room, probably intrigued by their laughter.

»What are you two talking about?«

They stared at her blankly for a moment. Then K grinned an artificial grin and sighed.

»Women,« he said so decidedly and with a face so straight that it sent Freddy into a fit of very badly suppressed laughter.

»Oh dear,« Fräulein Rahm said dramatically, and then just kept standing there, grinning at them as if expecting to be included in their stimulating conversation.

K and Freddy continued to grin back at her, not showing the slightest inclination to do so.

»Yes,« K said after another moment of awkward silence, »we should probably all get back to work, right? Do something about that … war situation we’re in?« He paused, his gaze wandering over his desk, as if trying to find something to busy himself with.

»Finkie,« he said finally—his favourite nickname for Freddy, and one he actually called him by in front of other people, well, in front of somewhat dense people like Fräulein Rahm at least, »could you get me a bunch of German Shepherds maybe? Just … half a dozen or something? What you can get?« He said it as though sending Freddy off to the bakery to see if there was any bread left.

»Oh, sure, I guess. Yes, I'll see to that immediately,« Freddy stammered and got up, swaying dangerously for a moment, cast first Fräulein Rahm and then K one last flustered look and then hurried off to somewhere.

Two days later K had almost forgotten about his impromptu job order for Freddy and when Freddy came into the office that day, happily informing him that ‘they’ had finally arrived he had no idea what Freddy was talking about at first. Even as he followed Freddy into the front room and looked at the group of men Freddy presented him with, all in strangely rural attire, he didn’t immediately understand what this was all about.

Only after another long moment it began to dawn on him. Oh Freddy …

»Finkel,« he said with a pained voice, fiercely trying to not laugh at him, »I meant we’d need _dogs_ for when the city is attacked. Not … _actual_ … German shepherds …«

Freddy just stared at him, increasingly mortified.

Just to not break into a fit of laughter he ordered him to get them out again—a little too harshly maybe, he thought when he saw the look on Freddy’s face as he lead the men outside. He immediately went to apologise to him—after the stupid thing the other day he sensed that couldn’t afford another blunder by making Freddy feel ridiculed or humiliated. So he tried to be very serious about it, assuring him that it was an easy enough mistake to make when suddenly he sensed that someone small was standing right next to them, staring up at them curiously as they were, freshly reconciled, dangerously close to getting lost in each other’s eyes.

It was Jojo Betzler.

Jojo had been mainly distributing propaganda pamphlets around town during the past weeks and only dropped in briefly from time to time to get new material. K had since the day at the pool almost—but not completely—forgotten about his strange inquiries about Jews.

But it immediately came back to him now when Jojo, again, began to ask about them. Whether you would get a medal if you turned one in, he wanted to know. He was also writing a book on them, he told them eagerly, with some insane title like _Huhu Jew!_ or something. Was everyone going nuts today?

He called him over to his desk, eager to divert him away from his favourite subject by showing him the fantastical uniforms Freddy and he had thought up the other day and of which he had in the meantime drawn little colourful sketches and Jojo now gaped at them in earnest wonder. He sometimes reminded him so much of himself as a boy, a little peculiar and so obsessed with becoming a war hero. His father was away too and he wondered if it was for Jojo like it had been for him back then, though of course he had been a couple of years older than Jojo was now. He still remembered it so vividly, the time when his father and brother had been gone to fight in the war. Him alone at home with his mother all of a sudden. How silent it had been and how lonely he had sometimes felt then—and, in a way, ever since.

He asked Jojo how that went, being the man of the house now, but Jojo just shrugged and said that it was okay, trying to sound very grown-up about it—just how he himself would have done.

So he just gave him his assignment for the day and let him go, making a mental note however to really keep an eye on him from now on.

*

»Finkel!« K's harsh voice sounded through the office some days later, »into my office!«

Freddy hurried inside.

»Close the door.«

»Yes, captain.«

Freddy closed the door behind himself obediently, then turned around.

»What's up?«

»Nothing,« K said, his voice soft and tender now, a smile on his face, »I just wanted to see you. I missed you.«

»I was in the next room.«

»Exactly. Too far away. Come here.«

Freddy went over and K pulled him down into his lap and into a kiss.

»What are you doing?« Freddy murmured, »it's the middle of the day.«

But K didn't answer, just pulled him a little bit closer, deepening the kiss and slowly starting to unbutton Freddy's shirt.

Eventually Freddy pulled away, laughing but trying to put on a serious face. »You really are nuts, are you? Someone could come in any time.«

K just looked at him, studying his face.

»Shouldn't we take the afternoon off?«

»Can we?«

»Who cares if we can. I say we can, so we can. Shall we make a little outing? A little biking trip maybe?« He took a look outside at the cloudless blue sky. »The weather is just wonderful.«

»I don't have a bicycle.«

»I'll take you on mine. Come on. And take your briefcase so it looks like we have some place to be.«

The weather really was beautiful. They walked until they had reached the outskirts of the town, then they stopped so K could take Freddy on the frame. It started out a little bumpy and twice they almost ended up in the ditch on the side of the road. The truth was that K had, since being one-eyed, a hard enough time to maintain his balance when riding his bike alone. With the additional weight of Freddy in front of him he was struggling even more. He hated it how the most mundane things, things he before had never wasted any thought on at all, now suddenly had become problematic like that. He really felt like a crippled man in those moments. Freddy offered to try switching places but that just fuelled K and on the next try he finally managed it.

He took them down the dusty road, away from the town. Around them everything was still green, though autumn would come soon and start turning everything into shades of red and yellow. Wide fields were on either side of them, with the last bits of corn still to be harvested and in the distance green hills rose from the landscape, here and there dotted with little villages, mainly visible by the church towers protruding them.

They passed some solitary farm houses and through some hamlets until they finally passed a sign that read ‘Röditz’. It was a small village. A church, a _Wirtshaus_ , a couple of small houses, a handful of farms, a bakery. Most of it was lined up on the one main gravel road that passed through the village. A couple of dogs barked at them but apart from them and some chicken on the front lawn of one the houses nobody was to be seen. K finally stopped in front of one of the small houses to their left.

»Is this your house?« Freddy asked, hopping off the bike.

»Was, yes,« K said, »You said you wanted to see it, so here it is.«

He had sold the place shortly before Freddy had arrived and an elderly couple now lived in it.

A narrow, dried up and overgrown ditch was separating the lot from the street, shrubbery and rose bushes were growing around the wooden fence around it. The house was painted in mint green, though the colour was faded from the years. Around it was a half-wild garden, with two wooden sheds and a couple of apple trees.

»It’s beautiful. I can imagine growing up here must have been nice,« Freddy said and then, after a pause, added, »though a little far off everything maybe.«

»It was,« K said, »both of it.«

Freddy looked up to the brown windows. »Which one was yours?«, he asked.

»That one, the rear one on the left,« K replied, motioning towards it. »I used to climb out of the window and down the downpipe. Just for the hell of it,« he laughed. »But come on,« he said then, »I wanted to go someplace else, too.«

They walked the road back a bit until K made a turn at the little church, leaned his bike against the iron fence next to it, and then lead them through a small gate.

His family’s graves were at the far end of the small graveyard. His mother’s name was freshly carved into the stone below his father’s name. Next to it was a smaller stone with his brother’s name on it.

»Oh,» Freddy said, noting the date on Max Klenzendorf’s tomb stone. »It’s your brother’s birthday today.«

»Yes,« K said softly and smiled. »It’s the first time in years that I’ve managed to be here on his birthday.«

»So this is why you wanted to come here.«

K shrugged. »I don’t know. Maybe. Kind of just turned out that way.«

His smile had faded away a little.

»He isn’t really in there though. So it doesn’t really matter I guess. They never brought his body home.«

»Oh,« Freddy said, »yes, of course. Where did he die?«

»Somewhere in France. He went missing, we don’t actually know what happened to him, or where he ended up. My father’s actual grave is somewhere in Belgium, too. This is just … to have some memory here I guess.«

After their short visit to Röditz K took them out of the village again, made a turn after a while, off the road they had come and onto the larger, paved country lane.

It was easy to forget here that there was a war going on while they rode down the shadowy road, huge trees on either side whose branches hung low above their heads, just the steady sound of the tires on the road, the wind in the leaves above them and the twittering of birds.

But a couple of dozen meters before the town sign of the next small town the idyll was interrupted abruptly. They had both seen it from afar—something that didn’t belong, a shape, a shadow. But only now, a couple of metres from it they consciously noted it for the first time and K stopped sharp.

There was someone dangling from the tree. Just here, on the side of the road. It should have been a familiar enough sight by now but it still unsettled both of them. It was a young soldier, still in parts of his uniform though someone seemed to have taken his boots. A deserter, surely. How he had ended up here? Who had caught him, put him up here? He wore a cardboard sign around his neck. ' _Ich bin_ _ein Feigling._ _Ich wollte nicht für Deutschland kämpfen._ ' it read. 'I'm a coward. I didn't want to fight for Germany.'

»Shit,« murmured K.

Freddy had averted his eyes. Too gruesome was the sight. It surely had been several days already that he had been up there.

They continued, but both had fallen silent. K took them to a meadow, located on a little slope from which you looked down and around on the scenic landscape and there they lay now, in the shadow of an old oak. High grass around them, insects buzzing in the air, the sun shimmering through the oak leaves. They had both taken off their jackets and boots and socks, rolled up the legs of their trousers.

It was beautiful, almost peaceful, hadn't it been for the nameless soldier on the tree, whose image still lingered in front of their eyes. They still hadn't talked much since then, both sunken into their own thoughts.

»How long do you think he was up there?« K asked after a while.

»Don't know,« Freddy said. »Looked like a while.«

»Yes, » K agreed. »What a shame. To die now, like that, for nothing.«

Freddy didn’t respond and so K went silent again too.

»What do you think will happen to us?« Freddy said after a while, sounding as if he had been thinking about this for a long time. »You think they'd hang us too?«

»Hang us? For what? For taking the afternoon off?« K laughed but Freddy didn’t join in.

»No, of course not. I mean for … you know. What we are … do.«

»Oh … that. For us being together, you mean?« He shook his head. They had never spoken about this. The fear of being caught was their natural companion and it never really went away and the best chance they had of maybe forgetting about it a little bit was to not address it. And so they hadn’t, the same way they didn’t usually talk about the war, like not talking about it would make it go away somehow. »No, I don't think so,« K continued. »They'd arrest us, put us away. In jail or one of their camps.«

»Oh,« Freddy said, with a small voice, »like Jews you mean?«

»Kind of,« K said quietly and fell silent for a moment. »You know they have a symbol for … homosexuals?« he said then, hesitating, unsure whether he should have rather said ‘us’. »Like the yellow star,« he added.

»Really? What is it?«

»A pink triangle. They have red triangles for communists, and some others I think—and a pink one for homosexuals.«

»How do you know that?«

»I heard,« K said vaguely.

»Do you know anyone who's … in a camp?«

K nodded slowly. »Or at least I know some people who were arrested during the raids in 1937, and some of them aren't free until today. They say they transfer some of them to the camps after the jail time. But I haven't heard of them or anything. I'm just assuming. They could just as well be dead already.« K looked at Freddy for a moment. »Do you even remember how it was … before?«

»What do you mean?«

»I mean the time … before all of this started. Before _they_ came.«

»They who?«

»They. Him. The Nazis. Before they turned this country into a sick joke. It was different before, you know? For people like us I mean.«

Freddy shrugged. »I don’t know,« he said slowly.

»Did you ever go to Berlin?«

»No, never.«

»There were bars there, clubs. It was very easy to meet other people. I lived there for a while. Wound up there after the war. Oh, I wish you could have been there. Really almost every other person I knew was queer and barely anybody cared. Like my landlady. It was like … nobody had work so there wasn't much to do but to fuck around and party. So I brought boys home, Fräulein Weber who lived there too, sometimes even two of them, sometimes a girl … And my landlady, she changed our sheets in the morning and never said a word. It's so interesting how keen people are to accept realities. Whatever you present them with as being normal—they will most probably just go along with it. As you can see now. I mean of course it was still illegal, officially at least, and if you met the wrong people you could get in trouble. But in reality, that was very rare. Did you know they even considered abolishing the paragraph? There were real discussions about it. But then of course Haarmann happened, another confirmed murderer. And then people were like look, they are all lunatic murderers after all.«

»Who?« Freddy asked, uncomprehending.

»Haarmann?« K said, with an astonished voice. »You have got to know Haarmann? The guy who killed all the boys? In Hannover?«

»Oh, I heard of him I think. But I didn’t know he was a homosexual?«

»Yes, you would have been too young to remember yourself. They do like to omit that part. Like it’s harder to bare than the fact that they killed dozens of boys, him and his lover … So they didn’t abolish the paragraph after all. But still it was a good, better time. Not altogether of course, we were fucking poor, and there was nothing to do, no work, well you know. But it sure was better than this shit. And if I hadn’t been to Berlin, who knows what would have happened to me? Probably would be married with three children by now.«

Freddy chuckled, the thought being both ridiculous and terrifying. »Did you have girlfriends here then?« he asked. The thought had never crossed his mind before, but something in the way K had said that had made him prick up his ears.

»A couple, yes.«

»Really?« Freddy said, astonished and gnawed on his lip for a moment. »Did you sleep with them?« he asked then a little awkwardly.

»God, no,« K laughed. »I was the gentlemanliest gentleman. The wet dream of any Bavarian, catholic mother-in-law. It was only later in Berlin, before I got to know the … other side, that I did. The girls there kind of expected you to sleep with them. Which the Bavarian girls really didn't. They probably didn't even know how that worked.«

»And how is that?

»How's what?

»Sleeping with a woman?

K paused, looking at Freddy in puzzlement. »You’re kidding.«

»Why?«

»Have you never slept with a woman?«

»No?« Freddy said, »Why should I?«

»I don't know … just. How did you get through the army?«

»Why?«

»Because … isn’t it kind of expected? To go out with the boys? Meet the local girls. Get it on with them. I don’t know …«

Freddy shrugged. »I don’t know. I just never did that. And it wasn’t even like I was the only one. There were all sorts of guys … devout Christians, some insisting on being faithful to their wives or girlfriends … And I mean I really wasn’t interested, so I didn’t.«

»You’re a marvel, Finkie. A true, pure, too pure marvel,« K laughed.

»Well, I’m just not putting out only because I think someone expects it from me,« Freddy said unflinchingly and K rolled his eyes at that.

»So?« Freddy continued then, insistently. »How is it then?«

»Well,« K began, »my God, I don’t know. What should I tell you? You just close your eyes, think of something else and get it over with.«

»Why, that sounds like a lot of fun,« Freddy said derisively. »So sad I missed out on that.«

K smiled a crooked grin. Then a thought seemed to be coming to his mind.

»But you have—with a man?« he asked Freddy.

»Of course,« Freddy said in an alarmed tone. »What do you think? Did I give the impression like I didn't?«

»No,« K said quickly, »but I don't know. A lot of guys don't until they're older. I didn't until I was almost your age.«

»No, I … I had a friend … back then,« Freddy began, hesitating a little. »Nobody knew about us. We were still in school. Ludwig, his name was. But everyone called him Ludo. It was very nice for a while. And he was very nice too. Well, until he wasn't. Or possibly he never really was. I don't know. He became a Nazi.«

»Oh?« K said. »How's that?«

»Well,« Freddy began, sighing, »he met these other guys, who were part of a shooting club, or at least that was what he told me it was. They practised shooting in the woods, with illegal weapons and that. Well, it turned out it was the SS—I didn't even know exactly what it was back then, only knew it was somehow associated with the National Socialists and that it had been forbidden. Soon he was basically married to his new friends, wore their uniform, started blabbering about Jews and the superior Northern Race, about how Germany had been enslaved by the winners of the war, that kind of stuff. Well, it ended between us around that time, we just drifted apart. He had become so weirdly obsessed with that stuff and I just wasn't interesting to him anymore. It's weird, to think that I've ever been with him now. That I loved him, or thought I did at least. I don't know if he'd always been like that and I didn't see it or if he just changed so much. I mean if it wasn't for him, who knows who I'd be today. I surely would have never had the courage to approach another boy like that. He made the first step, he was the experienced one. I didn't even know … I mean I knew there had to be others, boys who liked boys, men who liked men, for it to be forbidden and considered bad—and I also knew that I was one of them. But I thought I was maybe the only poor devil in a 100 kilometre radius or something. I didn't know there were so many of us, that it was so common. So I mean, I owe him that much. But in the end it's just really disturbing how he turned into this … monster. Right under my eyes. He almost killed a guy. A communist. This was when the SS had started parading around town in their uniforms like they were the police or something. And there was this group of communists, they were mostly just kids from our school too. And I mean they always got into fights with the communists. But that time? They beat them up so bad. And Ludo kicked that one boy in the head so hard and so often he almost died. Just like that, in broad daylight, in the middle of the street. Nobody dared to say who it had been afterwards, they bullied and threatened them into not talking to the police, so he didn't even get punished for it, but still everyone knew. It was an open secret. The communists tried to get back at him but they never succeeded. We were long broken up by then, but still. I was horrified. Because you think you know someone and then it turns out that you really don’t. And then sometimes I think … I didn't ever think I would kill anyone in my life. And now I've already killed so many and it's not even weird. It's just what's expected of me and what everyone else does too.«

Freddy stopped there as if suddenly realising how long he had talked and talked. He had never told this to anyone, how could he have. K looked at him, guessing as much and shifted a little closer to Freddy, one hand gently grazing Freddy’s arm. »I know … It’s horrible. That feeling. You tell yourself it’s different because you’re at war. But is it, really?« He sighed. »Do you know where he is now?«

Freddy shook his head. »No idea.«

»And how long was it that you were together?«

Freddy shrugged. »A year maybe? Little less than a year?« He paused. »He was the only real relationship I ever had. I met some other guys later, during my RAD, during my year of military training, in the army … But it never was like that.« He paused again. »Or like this.« Then he raised his eyes which he had kept lowered during this entire time and looked at K. »Were you ever in a relationship? With a man I mean?«

»A couple of times, yes. But it was mostly just half-serious. There was one serious relationship but it ended when he got married and wanted to keep me on the side. Which was, well, no, thank you. And then then in the late 30s it all ended somehow, the community was destroyed, I moved back here and then the war started.«

»Where you mobilised right away? In 1939?«

K nodded. »Yup. I was drafted in August and then we were sent to Poland right away. I suppose you were there too?«

Freddy nodded and K sighed.

»It really went down the drain since then, didn’t it?«

»I suppose so.«

»I mean … how did it end up like this? Don’t you ever wonder if this was it? Life? On two fucking wars I wasted it. And now we're either going to be shot by Russians or Americans or sooner or later locked away by the Nazis. And I gave those shitheads my eye. I mean really, we have the entire world against us. We're at war with, what? Thirty, forty countries? We're losing this war and they won't admit it. They won't stop until literally everyone is dead in a ditch.«

Freddy frowned. »So you don't think there’s a chance we could still win?«

»Look around you. We're finished. We're fucked. And it's for the best we are. Believe me. I don't even want to know how fucked we would be if we would win the war. And us, men like us especially. But really, there is simply no way. The Wehrmacht was in a disastrous state when we were still out there, wasn’t it? Just a horde of ill-equipped, ill-trained sorry men on Pervitin or opium or whatever. And now? With the Brits being in the Normandy? And the Americans? It’s over. Or how was it when you were out there? When you were attacked?«

Freddy chuckled. »Well, it really wasn’t so great,« he admitted. »At some point we had like … one functioning MG left? And maybe a dozen of hand grenades. And we had almost no food left, no ammunition. And the terrain was so flat we couldn't even leave our position to take a shit, you would've been immediately under fire. So we were sitting there, literally in our own crap with nothing left to fight with, but retreating? No way. And we were like … what are they expecting us to do? Fistfight them?«

K chuckled. »Destroy them with your German brain powers. Telepathic warfare. My God, yes! That's the Wonder Weapon they were talking about all along!«

Freddy broke into a fit of giggles.

»Or throw at them with your poo, come on, soldier, be creative!«

»Oh God. Stop« Freddy snorted. »You do know we all had diarrhoea of course?«

»Well obviously, who didn't? That makes it an even more effective weapon. See, it was tactics all along!«

»Oh God, am I laughing or crying?« Freddy asked, fruitlessly trying to regain his breath.

K sighed, his laughter slowing down. »One really doesn’t know, doesn’t one?«

He sighed once more and then rolled onto his stomach to fully face Freddy. »But I can tell you one thing. I’m really glad I got you. I wouldn’t know what to do without you.«

Freddy smiled back at him, smitten and K moved in just a little bit closer and then started kissing him, so slowly and sweetly as if to carefully discard of the dark themes they had raised.

»How did we become … this?« he said after a while as he broke the kiss, propped himself on his arms a bit so he could look at Freddy.

»Hm?« Freddy just made, his cheeks rosy and his lips reddened and his hair messy where K’s hands had been entangled in it.

»Seems like a dream that we met, doesn't it? I mean, we could've just … ignored each other back then, gone home and … I don't know. Sometimes I picture myself like that, like in an alternative time line where I'm still alone and miserable and I don't even know what I'm missing. What I could've had. And then I think … but we did meet, and we do have each other and it's so … I feel like I've known you since forever. And then I look at the world and think … what a time to fall in love.«

He had said that last part so matter-of-factly, not even realizing what he had said until Freddy didn't answer.

»Oh, what I ... I mean. Wasn't that clear?«

»Not to me,« Freddy said quietly.

K smiled. »Well, Freddy Finkel, I'm in love with you. There you go, I said it. I made you come here to Falkenheim, I'm constantly after you, I miss you when you're in the next room, what did you think was going on?«

Freddy looked at him, a little flustered, and shrugged. »I don't know. I wasn't sure.«

K looked at him with an amused frown. »Well, now you can be.«

They went back home soon after that and it was good they did as it turned out because half way home one of the tires went flat and they had to walk the rest of the way.

It took them a good hour to finally be back in Falkenheim.

Just when they were crossing Horst-Wessel-Straße, they saw two black cars driving down the street and stopping in front of one of the houses.

Gestapos, K thought, ready to sigh it off and continue when suddenly he realised whose house that was. He stopped abruptly, putting down the bike which he had been carrying.

Freddy stopped too and cast him a questioning look.

»Isn't that the Betzler's house?« K said.

»The Betzler's?«

»Jojo Betzler, that boy. And his mother, Rosie. The one who kicked me in …«

»Ah, yes,« Freddy said, remembering, and followed K's gaze towards the light blue house in front of which now a group of black-suited men emerged from the cars, heading towards the bright green front door.

»I don't know,« Freddy said flatly. »Is it?«

»Yes, I think so,« K hissed, his heart racing all of a sudden, not taking his eyes from the Gestapos who were know entering the house. Something wasn't right here. Not right at all.

»Come on,« he said, picking up the bike again and hurrying down the street, towards the Betzler's house.

»What are you doing?« Freddy asked, trying to keep up with him.

»I think his mother,« K lowered his voice to barely a whisper, »is involved in … something. And do you remember how Jojo kept asking about … you know? I think there might be … well I don’t _know_ but something’s wrong, with them being there now. He might be in danger.«

»Okay,« Freddy said, hesitating. »And what's your plan?«

K slowed down for a moment, looking at Freddy, his expression blank.

»I have no idea,« he admitted. »We'll have to improvise.«

When they came into the Betzler's house, the Gestapos, with the giant Deertz leading the operation, were already rummaging through the living room, searching for anything incriminating, Jojo standing and watching them helplessly with blank fright and panic in his eyes. As of yet, though, they didn’t seem to have found anything.

What was bringing them here, Deertz asked.

They were dropping off pamphlets for Jojo to distribute in town, K told him, praying that he wouldn't actually want them to give any to Jojo because he was sure nothing like that was actually in the briefcase Freddy was still carrying.

He distracted him from that topic by trying to start a conversational chat while they, along with Jojo, began to follow Deertz through the house, like an anxious, sad caravan, moving from room to room while the other Gestapos turned everything upside down, opened every drawer, flipped through every book. Every one of them sensing that _something_ was still bound to happen.

And something did happen.

They had reached the parents' bedroom when Deertz spotted Jojo's DJ knife missing.

Where it was, he wanted to know, sending Jojo into flustered stammering which was abruptly interrupted by a girl appearing seemingly out of nowhere in the door, holding said knife, claiming to be Jojo’s sister Inge and to have stolen the knife from him in some kind of sibling scheme.

K sent a questioning look into Jojo's direction who seemed to be just as surprised seeing her there as everyone else was, more than that he was looking at her in complete terror. K was almost sure that this wasn't really Jojo's sister. He had no idea if Jojo in fact did have a sister but neither his mother or himself had ever mentioned any.

They all proceeded to the girl's alleged room then, which Deertz had demanded to take a look at. It really looked like a girl's bedroom and on the desk K spotted a framed portrait of a girl, younger than the proclaimed Inge who was standing here, but still vaguely resembling her. It could have been her perhaps, but K wouldn't have sworn on it.

»I don't suppose I could see your papers, could I?« Deertz said, his words soaked in false friendliness, evidently doubtful about the girl's identity as well, redirecting K's attention from the cluttered desk back to the girl still standing in the door and looking rather flustered now herself, not responding at once.

»Papers, Miss Betzler. Quickly, please. We don't have all day,« he plunged in before he knew it, in the most commanding tone he could muster.

»Yes, of course,« she said, quietly, looking at him directly for the first time and began moving hesitantly towards the desk as if unsure where to look for any papers.

Hastily, fumbling, she rummaged through the desk, opening one drawer after the other, each full of papers and clutter. Finally, after what seemed like a little eternity she stopped and slowly retrieved a passport.

K extended his hand and she gave it to him. The name read, in fact, Inge Betzler. And the girl in the passport photograph was undoubtably the same as in the photo that was standing on the desk but here she was ill-looking, her skin pale and dark shadows under her eyes.

»How old are you in this photo?« he asked her.

»They're three years old. I was fourteen,« she said.

»Date of birth?« he asked.

»First of May,« she said, her voice shaking slightly, »1929.«

It was wrong. It was May 8th, 1928. So it really wasn't her. He let his eyes linger on the document for a moment longer.

»Correct. Thank you, Inge,« he said then, folding it back together. »Get a new photo. You look like a ghost in this one,« he added, about to hand the passport back to her when suddenly Deertz interrupted them.

»Wait,« he said, striding through the room towards them. His heart dropped. This was it. Now he wanted to see it for himself and he would see that it had been wrong and that he had played along. His mind was racing to find some plausible explanation for this while he defeatedly prepared himself to hand it to him, having no plan, no explanation at all, simply hoping for a miracle that would dissolve this situation.

But Deertz didn't even look at him or his half-heartedly outstretched hand holding the passport. Instead he walked right past him, his eyes fixed on something on the desk.

»What is ... this?« he asked in his piercing voice, lancing the tip of Jojo's knife which he was still carrying into a clothbound notebook that had something stitched into its cover.

»Yohoo Jew,« he read, picking it up from the desk. «Tell me, who did this?«

»I did,« the girl said quickly. »It's an exposé on Jews. How they think, behave, look ...«

K cast Jojo a long look. This was the silly thing Jojo had told them he was working on. Jojo looked at him with a troubled, sheepish expression, as if pleading him not to tell on him as now surely, K must be getting suspicious, knowing that this had been Jojo's own project, if he hadn't already seen through their, Jojo and that girl's, sham.

In the meantime Deertz had begun flipping through the book, obviously delighted by its contents.

»Guys, you have to see this,« he said, chuckling and K moved in towards Deertz as the others were, laughing along with them while Deertz comically presented them with the best parts of the book, which mainly consisted of absurd drawings and fairy tales about Jews.

Pleased, Deertz finally thanked the girl, assuring her of having made his day, and then said his goodbye, not without telling them however, with a sticky sweet smile, to give him a ring whenever they would see anything suspicious and then, finally, the black figures departed down the stairs, leaving Jojo and the alleged Inge to themselves again.

»Nice to meet you, Inge,« K said, having stayed behind with them and finally handed her back the passport. Then he took Jojo's knife which Deertz had left lying on the desk to give it back to Jojo, playfully tipping him on the head a little with the handle upon seeing into his still frightened eyes.

»Stay home, Jojo,« he told him. »Look after your family. And look after this knife.« He handed it to him and then followed the other one’s down the stairs, suddenly wishing to be as far away from here as possible. 

Freddy was waiting for him downstairs, the Gestapos already having left.

»Come on, let's go,« K said and picked up his bike again.

»What was that?« Freddy asked once they were out of earshot of the house.

But K just shook his head. »Not here. Let's go to my place.«

»She lied,« K said once they were inside his flat, his voice lowered still. The walls sure could always have ears these days.

»Who? Inge?«

»She's not Inge. She didn't actually look like the girl the passport belonged to and she said the date wrong. The date of birth. I mean, one would know one's own birthday, right?«

»But … why? Who is she then?«

»Freddy,« K just said, with a pained voice, »please. Think.«

Freddy went silent for a moment, frowning. Then his expression changed.

»Oh,« he said. »You mean she's … a Jew?«

K nodded. »Yes, of course, Freddy. What do you think? I was suspecting something like that. The way Jojo kept asking about them. His ridiculous book.«

They had sat down at the kitchen table and K had, with shaking hands, first lit himself a cigarette and then poured himself a good bit of schnapps which he now took a big gulp of and then moaned.

»Oh God, what have I done. When they find out I'm done for. And now I have told you too. Oh God.«

»What? I won't …«

»I know, Freddy,« K said quickly. »I didn't mean … But they will think that you were in on it. And now you are. If you'll ever be questioned, say it was all me. That you had no idea.«

Freddy shook his head. » _Kurti_ , what are you talking about? Nobody's is going to question anyone. It all went well, didn't it?«

K, not even reacting to Freddy having called him Kurti, just took another gulp from his glass.

Freddy frowned at him. »Could you …,« he began but then got up, fetched a glass from the cupboard over the sink and filled it with water from the tap.

»… drink some water maybe?« he continued as he set down the glass in front of him.

»What's that going to do?« K said but emptied the glass in one go anyway.

»Why did they go to his house?« Freddy asked. »You think they suspected something?«

K thought for a moment.

»It's Rosie,« he then said, »his mother. She's … involved in stuff. You know, in the underground. And his father, too, probably.« He casted him a look, a weird expression on his face suddenly. »I really shouldn't be telling you this. God, please don't make me sorry, I told you.«

»What, do you think I'd … I'm not going to tell anyone.«

»And I don't think you would, but. This is some super sensitive stuff I'm telling you. I shouldn’t even know about this … but it's always like … one person going like but I'm only telling this person and that person is only telling that person and …«

»Shh,« Freddy made. »I'm not. I'm not going to tell anyone. Why would I? And how come you know all this anyway?«

»I just … know?« he said vaguely. »Some old acquaintances here, you hear things, see things. There were some things before you arrived. It's just … I keep an open eye to know where not to look too closely, where to maybe lead the Gestapos and the SS into the opposite direction. But, oh God, I've never done anything like this. For a moment there, when he … I thought he wanted me to hand him the passport. Jesus. It was so close.«

He moaned once more and then let himself sink against Freddy's chest. Freddy laid his arm around him and with the other hand threaded tenderly through his hair.

»It's going to be okay,« he said quietly.

»Is it?« K mumbled into the fabric of Freddy's uniform.

» _Ja, bestimmt._ «

They were quiet for a while.

»Thank you,« K said eventually.

»What for?«

»For … being here? Just you. Being here. It's good, to not be alone.«

Freddy just hummed in approval.

»Everything's going to be okay,« he said again and K just listened to his words, let himself being held.

He didn't really believe this. Everything wasn't to be okay. But for now this had to be enough. For now this was okay. Today had been okay.

*

They hanged Rosie Betzler on an icy November morning.

It had been a couple of weeks, months almost, since the incident at her house. They hadn't seen much of her or Jojo since then—with Jojo not working for them anymore and probably having returned to school anyway. And it was probably for the best, K had thought, lest anyone got suspicious at seeing them being friendly. The way it looked they hadn’t returned to the house, hadn’t found out about the girl’s true identity, not discovered that wherever the true Inge Betzler was, she wasn't the girl they had met at the Betzler’s house.

But Rosie they had caught anyway. K saw her when he passed the square. He didn't usually look at those poor souls up there, it wasn't a pleasant view after all, and he wasn't sure what had made him that day. But he had and there she had been. A little flyer was attached to one leg of her trousers. ‘Free Germany. Fight the Party.’

His thoughts wandered immediately to Jojo. If he knew already? What would he do now? Was there any adult left to look after him? For a moment he considered going to look after him, to see if he was alight … well of course he wouldn't be, but just … if there was anything to do. But then he didn't. It still didn’t seem wise to him for them to be seen together an then … Who was he to him after all? Maybe Jojo would think he had been after this, that it was his fault. And wasn't it, a little bit? Couldn’t he have done more? Keep his ears open more? Knowing that they must have suspected the Betzler’s of something? Maybe he would have picked something up, that they found something new out, which they must have, and would have been able to warn her? But he shook the thought off. No, how could he have? You couldn’t always be lucky enough. But it broke his heart for Jojo. No child should lose its mother like this. Especially not like this. He just hoped they hadn’t found the girl too.

Winter went by excruciatingly slow and worryingly fast at the same time.

On one hand it seemed to last forever. It was a hard winter, it snowed and snowed and temperatures dropped far below zero. There was little food, even less now then there had been before. And the war kept going on still. That, too, didn’t seem to ever end. Maybe it really would never end, K thought more than once. Maybe they were trapped in some sort of limbo—where there was always winter and always war. Where the war would eternally seem almost lost but never actually end.

And then, on the other hand, hadn’t it just been autumn? Hadn’t it just been Christmas? New Year’s? Days had melted into weeks, weeks into months and before they knew it, spring had come. It was the most hopeless spring they had ever experienced. No blossoming, no blooming could belie the fact that nothing but the end was approaching. There were air raids now somewhere every day. Soon the entire country would be in ruins.

Falkenheim though was still standing but even there they had alarms several times a week now, mostly at night.

Their job had rendered itself more and more useless by the day. Nobody in their right mind still expected Germany to win the war at this point. It was mainly the NS administration that was still insisting to prepare the defence of the town. New people still appeared on the gallows, people who had tried to organise peaceful surrenders, hoping to prevent more deaths, more misery and, ultimately, the destruction of the town. But no, they wouldn’t have that. Gladly they would sacrifice even the last living soul just to save their own skin.

It was some night on the first days of May and they lay together in K’s bedroom, Freddy’s head resting on his chest, their feet entangled, listening to the thrumming of the rain outside. Days had become long again and it was still a little light outside. K had opened the window, the drapes shielding them from any unwanted eyes lightly fluttering in the breeze.

How long would this last, he wondered as he did so often now. Would this have been the last time? They both must have been feeling like this because they had become less cautious, saw each other more often now, like this, at K’s place. And as they lay there and held each other a curious feeling crept up in him. Despite this still being real, still being now, he was already missing this.

Then something else caught his attention.

»Do you hear that?«

»What?« asked Freddy.

»Listen,« K whispered.

K had closed his eyes so Freddy did too. It was quiet, there was just the rain, the engine of a car somewhere in the streets. But then he heard it. Almost inaudible, carried indistinctly by the wind from afar. Gunshots. Artillery.

»How far do you think that is?«

»I don't know. Couple of dozen kilometres perhaps.«

Neither of them said anything for a couple of minutes, they just lay listening.

»So it really is coming all to an end,« Freddy said eventually.

K nodded slowly. »I wouldn't be surprised if we're going to have air raids one of these days.«

They fell silent again.

»Freddy,« K asked after while.

»Yes?«

»Will you spend the night?«

Freddy hummed in approval, lazily nodding into K’s chest. He had already almost fallen asleep.

They were roused from their sleep by a sudden noise in the middle of the night.

»Shit,« K hissed.

It was the air raid alarm. That otherworldly, eerie up-and-down howling air raid alarm.

»Get dressed,« he ordered Freddy, hastily jumping into his clothes himself.

»Should I go home?« Freddy asked, uncertain.

»What? No, of course not, you'll stay here. You're not going out there now, there’s no time. Nobody will care. There’s other things to worry about now. Do you have everything you brought with you? Grab the bed stuff too.« K was bending down to retrieve his emergency suitcase from below his bed, grabbed some other stuff from his nightstand and Freddy took the pillow and the blanket from the bed and then they hurried into the hallway where there was already a vivid chaos of footsteps and shouting to hurry up, everyone heading down. Only K’s neighbour Fräulein Huber passed them going upstairs—she was the _Luftschutzwart_ , the air raid precaution warden, of the building and had to make sure that everyone had heard the alarm.

When they arrived in the dimly lit cellar most people were already down there, greeting them with tired and anxious faces, some still in their nightgowns.

K nodded a quiet ‘Good Night’ and then he and Freddy found themselves a spot between the other people and their suitcases and packs and other belongings.

It didn’t take more than a minute until they heard the familiar sounds of approaching bombers, the sound barely muffled even through the thick walls. It usually just took a little while until they had flown by, off to some place else, and the air was clear again. But not this time.

Some minutes into the deafening roaring of them flying directly above them there suddenly was a whistling sound, a sound that there usually wasn’t, a sound none of them had ever heard before. Then, seconds later it was followed by a dull thud, then a blast wave, bursting the glass of the small cellar window, hit them and then the walls trembled, accompanied by the thundering sounds of something heavy shattering.

Small yelps and gasps sounded through the shelter. So this was it, now they, too, were being attacked.

Again and again it happened. Some people had started to cry, others were quietly mumbling prayers. Apart from that nobody spoke. K and Freddy, too, sat there in silence, with their knees drawn up, their shoulders brushing against each other ever so lightly.

Then, after what had felt like an eternity, the noises outside finally subsided. After a while Fräulein Huber got up to check the situation outside, if an all-clear was given. K offered to go instead but she insisted.

It took ages for her to return and when she did she was out of breath, stumbling down the stairs, then stopping on the threshold of the shelter, catching her breath.

»How bad is it?« someone said.

»Can we go?« Frau Meier asked, simultaneously, already clutching her things and picking up her sleeping daughter.

Fräulein Huber didn't respond for a moment and just looked round between them.

»Hitler’s dead. He killed himself,« she then said, almost impassively.

For a moment nobody said anything and maybe Fräulein Huber wondered if they had even heard her before it was Frau Tuchel, living across the hall from K, who eventually spoke.

» _Tja_ ,« she said and a light, collective chuckling ensued, sounding through the cellar as if their _Führer_ —self-declared redeemer of their people who had lead them into war, whom many of them had, at some point at least, worshipped, whom they had trusted blindly and who just recently had still been speaking about the _Endsieg—_ killing himself wasn't news but merely a funny part in a beloved play they all had seen many times before.

When they finally came out of their shelter they were presented with a scene of devastation. The centre of the town had been hit badly, dust filled the air and shattered buildings stood against the murky morning sky. All over town there were fires caused by incendiary bombs. The fire brigades and many helpers were already hurrying through the streets with hoses and buckets of water, their shouts and the cracking sounds of woodwork filling the air. But still there was something else. A whirring of whispers and gasps and agitated chatter. The news about Hitler's death was spreading through the town just as the fires were and it was hard to say which one of both things seemed more insignificant in the light of the other. The upper part of K’s house had been hit and the house where Freddy lived had suffered severe damage too. They were homeless, just like that. It didn’t even sink in right away. Everything had become so urgently real all of a sudden but at the same time almost impossible to grasp.

So Hitler was gone, leaving behind a swath of destruction. Like a captain fleeing the sinking ship he had made off. Somehow that meant, they all felt, it should have been over now. But it wasn’t, at least not in the eyes of the local SS administration. It was like everyone was acting in a play now and everyone knew it but nobody dared to address the utter ridiculousness of it, nobody wanted to end up at the gallows this close to the end.

Everyone was called to the weapons now. Children, elderly people—untrained, unfit. Everyone who could muster to hold a gun was of use to them.

For K and Freddy the last days of the German Reich past in a daze. The night after the air raid they had spent at the (still standing) DJ office because they had nowhere else to go. Even before they had found themselves a place to sleep that night there had been another alarm so they had moved down into the cellar rooms. They had never been down there before and it had turned out the cellar was packed with junk. Old furniture, boxes full of stuff, files, supplies …. First they had looted the storage room and amongst some tinned food that was long expired but still edible—at least to someone as hungry as them—they had been amazed to also find an entire box of Pervitin packages. It just needed a quick glance between them to ensure that they were both thinking the same thing.

They also found amongst all the things down there a trunk full of theatrical supplies, costumes, fabrics … And there rose another idea. Fuelled by the drug they decided to really make those silly uniforms they had designed, because if they were to fight, to go down, at least they would go down in shining armour. And when Freddy then found a large piece of vibrant pink fabric he suddenly knew what to do. What had started out as a silly joke was now becoming reality in front of their eyes, and in a more earnest way than they would have ever imagined. Pink triangles were now added all over to the original designs. Giggling they compared the additions they gradually made to their uniforms, the outside world only a distant source of noise now.

And so the time flew past them in a haze of sewing, gluing, dancing and love making. Were it days, years or just seconds that they spent in the DJ Office's cellar? They wouldn't have been able to tell. 

In the morning there were gun shots and artillery now to be heard, very close. So now it would start. Now it would end.

They had put on their freshly altered uniforms and they looked ridiculous, marvellous. Marvellously ridiculous.

K looked at Freddy and said his name. It was hard to concentrate. Everything was so clear but at the same time dizzy at the edges and time, time, the most valuable thing they didn't have, was slipping through their fingers.

»Freddy,« he said again and Freddy just nodded, as if understanding what meaning lay beneath that. He took him in, one last time perhaps, his dark-coloured eyes (they had nicked an eyeliner from Fräulein Rahm’s desk), the tip of his nose, the curl of his slightly smiling lips, his cheeks. Who knew what would happen out there? It surely wouldn't end well. Either with death or captivity or both, in the opposite order. Who knew if this wasn't the last time he was able to look at him like this?

And then he wanted to say something. Something else, something more. But he didn't. Couldn't. The words didn't come. And so he just pulled him into a hug, closed his eyes, listened to his breathing, felt his hair tickle him, his heartbeat next to his own and thought it instead, what he had wanted to say.

I love you, he thought.

It was chaos out there. And they were in the middle of it now, ducking from enemy fire and firing shots into the air themselves. For a moment K thought he maybe had seen Jojo, just standing there, lost, and gaping at them and their flamboyant appearance, but maybe he had just imagined that. Both Americans and Russians had arrived at the town, blowing their way through it. Screaming civilians, shredded remainders of German troops hurried past them, off to somewhere, nowhere.

And then there was a blast, the ground shook and then a building right next to them, already damaged by the air raids, collapsed. And where Freddy had been standing right next to him just now he now wasn't. In a reflex K had cowered down to the earth, his arms clasped around his head as if they could have protected him. Dust crept into his lungs, into his eyes. Coughing and blind he got up, wiping his eyes, trying to get the dust out of them and stumbled towards the rubble. He wasn't there. He shouted his name, desperately, but he couldn't even hear himself, his ears ringing and his voice lost in the turmoil of the falling town. No, it couldn't be. Not like this. He couldn't just have vanished. Futilely, he began seizing pieces of rubble, trying to move them, but soon his hands were scratched and bloody. Then he saw something unmistakably pink fluttering in the wind, a little higher up. He climbed up, retrieving it from under dusty rubble. It was Freddy's cape, which he had peppered with many, many pink triangles. Frantically he began to dig deeper, climb higher, scramble across the heap, down the heap, around it. But nothing. Standing on top of it he looked at the chaos around him. No Freddy. Anywhere. He let himself fall down right where he was standing and, clutching the cape, stared into nothingness. He felt a single tear rolling down his left cheek. He waited for more to come, wished for it even. But nothing. There was just emptiness in him now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow! As you can see this chapter got a little out of hand? I mean it's several chapters in one really, and under different circumstances I would have probably split it up - but I wanted the entire film verse in one chapter, so that's that. Thank you all for waiting! Life has gotten faster again, I'm having less free time than when I started writing this and also it's summer! Time to go out and enjoy the sun! So it's probably going to be more like one chapter per month or so... But! I am and will be still writing this! I didn't forget about this and will not (I mean the actual story which I actually wanted to tell is going to start only now lmao, so sorry @ anyone who felt a little mislead by the work discription, we're getting there now!) and I hope you won't either. Stay tuned, there's much more to come! <3
> 
> /23 June 2020/ Um yes, I wanted to add some notes re this chapter, right?  
> So there's the whole Inge/Inga passport muddle. It's quite unclear whether Jojo's sister is supposed to be called Inge or Inga. The subtitles say Inge, the passport reads Inga, and when you google it, you'll see that everyone else seems to be just as confused. I sticked to Inge though because Inga would have been a rather unusual name during the time while Inge was a very popular one. Also my personal theory is that it was supposed to be Inge but the name turned into Inga (in the passport) because when English speaking people try to pronounce "Inge" it kind of sounds like "Inga".  
> Also the date in the passport is neither the one Elsa tells K nor the one she tells Jojo later. She tells K it's May 1st, 1929. The passport reads May 8th,1928. She tells Jojo it's May 7th (1929?). So I decided to split that up and make the "true" date May 8th, 1929.  
> (Yes, I do like to lose myself in details.)
> 
> **G l o s s a r y**  
>  **Armes Kurtchen** poor Kurtchen; Kurtchen being a diminutive form of Kurt  
>  **bestimmt** _lit. determined;_ surely/certainly; can single-handedly be used to assure someone of something in a soothing way  
>  **Butterbrot** _lit. butter bread;_ sandwich, but not with toast (≠ bread) but with actual brown bread or pumpernickel etc.  
>  **Endsieg** _lit. end (=ultimate) victory;_ 'the word was widely used in the propaganda of Nazi Germany. Endsieg was part of the Nazi doctrine: Temporary losses notwithstanding, the Third Reich would ultimately prevail, and thus any breakdown in allegiance to Nazi ideology was not to be tolerated.' (src: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endsieg)  
>  **Gefreiter** a lower rank in the army, just two ranks above a simple soldier  
>  **Perventin** a drug which was, at least in the first years, widely used in the German army, it is said that even Hitler got it three times a day; chemically most similar to this would be Speed.  
>  **tja** _pronounced something like ~tchya;_ basically the shrug emoji ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ but as a word  
>  **Wehrkreis** _lit. defence circle (=district);_ military district  
>  **Wirtshaus** a type of inn which is also, or even mainly, a local restaurant and bar offering traditional food and drinks


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which life goes on and new living arrangements are made.

It was a hot Saturday afternoon and the sun was shining from a cloudless blue sky upon the ruins of Falkenheim.

It was quieter than it usually was, quieter than it had been during the past months. The carts full of rubble had stopped running from north to south, from east to west, from—did anyone actually still know where they were headed anyway? There still was the occasional group of refugees who had been passing through the city for weeks, coming from east, most of them not carrying more than a little bag, if anything at all. But even those were fewer today. It was just too hot to do anything, let alone to walk kilometres and kilometres in the burning sun.

So instead of labouring, most Falkenheimers had laid down their work for the week and now enjoyed the warm sun, sat on meadows, in parks, in gardens, on dusty heaps of fallen buildings or just in their living room—rendered a balcony by the fallen bombs.

During the last weeks of the war and the first weeks after it, time had been stretched into what had seemed like infinity, almost as if it had stopped existing altogether. Days had past like months and no minute had past, or so it had seemed, without something new to deal with, something else shattering the world, disarranging, rearranging everything.

Now, time had slowly begun to snap back into place again. People were finding their ways in the new world, a world that had been turned upside down, thrown into a chaos of rubble and contradicting truths. Defeated they were but finally free. The terror regime had ended but someone else was in power instead, people they didn’t understand, who had come from afar to both rescue and vanquish them, enemy and friend at the same time. An uncertain future lay ahead and an unspeakable past behind. Ever since the end of the war, the world had been in turmoil, but the beginning summer had foremost and mainly tasted of freedom and confidence of better times that surely were to come now. And so people had settled into their new lives, had accepted the ruins, the poverty, the new rules—almost as if this was mere fate and not the fruit of their own action and inaction. An unfortunate but natural state of being.

Where there had been a living room wall with two windows looking out to the street, there now was not. But what was there to do about it? Asked a couple of weeks ago if they could imagine living without the living room wall it would have been too absurd a question to even answer it. Now the living room wall had gone, and life continued all the same because well, it always does, doesn't it?

Life went on and they adapted. Because it was what they always did, what they always had done. Because it was the one thing they had learnt to be good at.

So there is this new club running around in funny uniforms? So the club actually belongs to a party you can vote for? So now they have won in the elections and suddenly there are flags and banners everywhere? So they implemented something that looks a lot like dictatorship? Well, what do you know! So now you have to watch what you say out loud? So now you cannot buy with Jews anymore? So now we are at war? _Tja._ At least there probably is a good reason for it and hey, we are winning anyway! So now they are taking the Jews somewhere, truckloads of them. So now there isn't food anymore, or electricity. So now there are airplanes flying about the cities, dropping bombs, never imagined sleeping in cellars with dozens of other people but oh well! So now it doesn't look too good anymore, maybe we aren’t winning after all? So now the war is lost. Living room walls have stopped being such a matter of course thing. And those guys maybe haven’t been so cool after all, lied to us just a bit, too. Well, how were we supposed to know? Now all the flags and banners and statues and symbols and slogans are being taken down again, destroyed by those foreign military people who are running things now, and the other guys—they are gone, just gone, even though they haven’t gone anywhere at all. Haven't there been party-loyal people everywhere just a couple of weeks ago? Didn’t you talk with pride of our brave soldiers just recently? Now they’re just sad and smelly figures, roaming the streets (if they are lucky), or (if they aren't) living encaged on wide bare fields, thousands and thousands of them. All the emblems and medals they have been so proud of ripped off their uniforms, rendering it the shabby piece of cloth it has always been. Haven't there been _Obersturmführer_ and _Gauleiter_ and all those made-up, want-to-be military men just yesterday? They have just stopped existing, literally—stopped existing. Where there have been _Obersturmführer_ and _Gauleiter_ there now are—not considering some poor devils who have been caught by those foreign military men—just Herr Müller and Herr Meier and Herr Schmitz and they live just across the street (if there still is a street). Maybe they have another name now than they’ve had just yesterday but maybe they don’t. Some of them are to vanish south someday, their houses empty all of a sudden, just some furniture and rumours left behind. In other cases, it will take years and years, even decades, for someone to hunt them down, for them to be put in court. But in most cases they will live happily ever after because if nobody talks about what has been in those twelve years that nobody wants to think about ever again, then certainly nobody will ask you what exactly it is that you have been doing during those twelve years.

There was a little voice in them, the people, now that it was all over, the tiniest little voice, telling them that all that had happened here during the last years—actually not so good, uh-oh, maybe they should have … but what was there to do now? There were other things to consider. There was a country to rebuild, most literally, stone by stone. And anyway, life went on, it always did. And so they adapted.

Elsa and Jojo were just on their way back home, both carrying a bag of food. They had been ‘shopping’, as they called it. They had gone out of town, to the villages where farmers illegally sold or traded the food they secretly held back from being rationed.

Just as during the war, you officially still got basically everything only on ration stamps and those rations provided barely enough to live. Soon, they had found out that it was much easier to get food when you went out of town, to the villages, and got the food from the farmers directly. You just needed something they wanted. China, clothes, American cigarettes, some still took money. There was still a lot of stuff around the house they didn’t need or at least could spare and which they were now giving away little by little—all of it already piled and stored away in Elsa’s former hiding place, just so no one would take it away from them should they be looted. It was mostly just the mundanest things. Nails, handkerchiefs, rugs, yarn, linen, kitchenware, but also a part of Rosie’s clothes and clothes of Inge’s and Jojo’s that didn’t fit them anymore. Even some of Jojo’s father’s clothes they had sorted out, thinking that he would probably not need all of them when he would finally come back home. They either brought those things directly to the farmers—some of them even asked for particular things to bring the next time—or traded them for cigarettes or other things on the black market in town which had begun to flourish in the past months and then took whatever they had traded there to the farmers.

Of course, they weren’t the only ones to do this, especially on Sundays it sometimes seemed like half the town was out on the country lanes to the villages. So they still had to be lucky, there were good days, when they had just what the farmers wanted, or when the farmers were especially generous and there were bad days, when someone else had already been there before them, when the farmers wouldn’t give anything and the only thing they could snatch were a couple of cherries or plums off the lawn—they just had to make sure to get out of there before the dog got them.

Today had been a more or less successful day. They had gotten a small bag of potatoes, a handful of green beans, a few carrots, and a head of cabbage, which they were now eager to get home before some _Ami_ would catch them with it. The Americans had taken over the administration in Falkenheim and of course none of the black-market activities were officially allowed. However, more often than not they somewhat tolerated it and so far they had never gotten in too much trouble—but you never knew. Some of the Soviet soldiers were still around, too, but they were presently busy packing up all their stuff to leave and retreat north into the sector they were administrating, and so they were seeing less and less of them.

They were now walking down Gartenstraße, how the street Jojo’s house was on was now called. It had been one of the first things the Americans had done: rename all the streets that had earlier been renamed by the Nazis. And so the signs reading ‘Horst-Wessel-Straße’ (named after a SA-leader who had been murdered by communists in 1930 and had thus been idolised by the Nazis as a martyr) had ended up on the scrap heap and the new ones now read ‘Gartenstraße’, which was the name the street had had before the Nazis had renamed it. Jojo had fallen back a little because he had stopped to pick up and pocket two cigarette butts that he had spotted lying on the street. (As soon as you had collected a couple of those you could use the tobacco to roll another cigarette and cigarettes were raising in value by the day.) Now that he was catching up with Elsa again, he spotted a man leaning against the wall next to their front door. A quick glance to Elsa told him that she had seen him too. Instinctively, they both slowed down, then walked carefully towards the house, but so as if to just pass it and not go in. Between looting allied soldiers and dispersed, tramping figures they had had a lot of unwelcome guests during the past few months. They passed him and the house from a safe distance, trying to get a glimpse of him from the corner of their eyes without calling his attention. From all they could see, he was just a dirty, shabby, starved German soldier.

Of course Jojo was always hoping, dreaming that one day a man would appear on their doorstep like this. He had played it through a zillion times in his head, how it would happen. Either at night, just after they had gone to bed, or in the middle of the day. Maybe he would be looking out of the window just then, and see him from afar, the figure of him becoming clearer and clearer until he would be sure, would run down the stairs, down the street, towards him, and maybe he wouldn’t recognize Jojo just then (he had grown quite a bit since he had last seen him) but then he would and Jojo would throw himself into the arms of the man who was bearing the exact same face as the man in the pictures above the mantlepiece, the only vivid picture of his father that he still had in his mind.

But he didn’t even begin to hope this time. His father was much taller, taller than most men really, and this man was rather short, and even more so the way he was slumped against the wall, his head bowed down to the street, lazily dragging smoke from a cigarette.

They passed him, not daring to approach the house right now, to come back when he would he gone.

But they didn’t get far. Suddenly they heard footsteps behind them and a voice calling Jojo’s name.

He recognised that voice, who—?

But then he knew.

He turned around to look at the man who had been standing at their door and who was now trying to catch up with them. Could it really be? He looked so thin and dirty and old. And hadn’t he seen him die … well, heard at least?

The man had stopped now, still a little bit away. A small, crooked smile had formed on his lips.

And then, before Jojo could think about it any more, before he had even decided to do so, his feet were running towards the man, and he hurled himself at him, hugged him, the bag of potatoes jammed between them.

»Captain K!« he exclaimed.

»Whoa, there, Jojo. I'm not a captain anymore,« K said appeasingly but grinned widely.

»You’re still alive!« Jojo continued, still staring at him in utter amazement.

»Well, yes, they took my gun,« K said, more to himself and gave Jojo another crooked smile. »What are you up to these days? You doing ok? I thought I should check in on you. Is your father back already?«

Jojo shook his head. »It's just the two of us.«

Elsa had come closer now too and studied the man whom she had seen but once before.

K gave her a greeting nod. »Hey there. You okay, too?«

She just nodded, uncertain still of what exactly to make of this guy.

»Do you want to come in?« Jojo asked excitedly. »We just got a lot of food, we can cook something. And you can take a bath!«

K made a grimace and looked down his sorry appearance. »Is it that bad?«

Elsa and Jojo both just sent him an awkward smile.

They turned back to the house then, K following Elsa and Jojo inside. He stepped into the hallway, turned towards the living room—and froze on the spot.

»Jesus,« he exclaimed, »what the hell happened here?«

»Oh, they came and took it all,« Jojo said casually as he proceeded into the kitchen.

There was barely any furniture left. One sofa was left in the living room, and the dining table surely wasn't the one the Betzlers had had before.

»Who they?«

»Russians,« Jojo said. »They took most of it. And then some Americans came too. I had to help them. Carry the sofa and the living room chair into their flat. Through half the town. And my parent's bed, they took that too. Had to help them disassemble it. But now it's quieter. I guess they're all settled now and with the Russians leaving …«

K seemed to be speechless for a moment as he took in the emptiness of the living room.

»Did they … do anything to you?« he asked then, worried suddenly.

Jojo shook his head. »Not really.«

»Not _really_?« K said sceptically, turning to Elsa and gave her a questioning look.

But she shook her head as well.

»They tried to,« she began, trying to sound as casual as possible, but instead stumbled over her words, »the Russians. But I … and … and Jojo told them to leave me alone, that I was … well, Jewish. And of course, they didn't believe me and it was a lot of chaos but then their officer came and put an end to it and in the end they left. We slept in my hiding place for a while, just in case someone would come at night. But there’s less trouble now.«

»Your … _hiding place_?« K enquired.

»I was,« Elsa began haltingly, »hiding here … well, I suppose you guessed as much … during, you know …«

K nodded. »Yes, of course.«

»It’s upstairs,« Elsa continued and couldn’t help but to sound a little diffident. Jojo was still the only person who knew about all of this and telling it to this man felt both wrong and demeaning, even if she knew that it shouldn’t, even knowing that he had helped her, »a little room in the wall below the roof.«

K nodded slowly and then frowned.

»Was there no adult to look out for you a little all this time?«

Elsa and Jojo just looked at each other. They hadn’t even considered that this would have been an option. They had gotten so used to being on their own and besides, they were expecting Jojo’s father back anytime now. Sure, they still hadn’t heard of him but it was still so shortly after the war had ended. The lists of missing people read out on the radios were still endless, the telephone didn’t work properly and getting a letter from A to B was an adventure. So Jojo wasn’t particularly worried, and he and Elsa just tried to make the best of everything until his father would be home.

They both shook their heads at K.

»Don’t you have any relatives? Or what about your friend? What’s his name again? Couldn’t his parents have watched out for you a little?«

»Yorki? Oh, his mother is very busy. They took in his aunt with her five children. Yorki has to share his room with three of his cousins. And his father still isn’t back either … And I think I have an aunt in Zwickau or something but I don’t really know her.«

»What about your parents?« K asked, looking at Elsa.

She raised her eyebrows, regarding K with an unreadable expression for a moment. Then her features softened a little.

»Well, they … they’re gone,« she said. »They didn’t make it.«

»I’m sorry,« K said after a pause, and it almost sounded as if he apologised for asking. He half-heartedly tried to form a sympathetic smile until he decided against it and instead bit it away to gnaw on his lower lip, and for a long moment nobody spoke.

»But where have you been all this time?« Jojo finally asked from the kitchen where he had started to unpack the bag he had been carrying.

K and Elsa followed him there. K leant against the door frame and Elsa started to unpack her bag too.

»Well, in captivity of course. With the Russians.«

»I thought they were going shoot you.«

»Yes, I thought so, too,« K said nonchalantly, »but they liked my uniform so much, they decided I had to have some valuable information—which I did as a matter of fact. So I told them everything I knew for hours and days and weeks and then I stayed on a bit and now they finally let me go.«

»What information?«

»Oh, just. You know. Nazi stuff. Names, lots of names. Who was in the Party, who was in the SS, the SA, who committed war crimes.« He paused. »Who killed members of the resistance.«

»Oh,« Jojo said, his voice quieter now, his eyes cast down, a shadow over his face, »I see.«

»Do you know who … who killed my mother?« he asked after a while.

K nodded. »They're dead.«

Jojo nodded slowly, not knowing what to do with this information and silently began to peel the potatoes. They just stood there in silence for a moment, the only sound the steady peeling noises, a bicycle passing on the cobblestone street, a radio playing somewhere in the neighbourhood.

Then, finally, K cleared his throat and said: »You said something about a bath?«

He had to carry the water from the tap in the yard because, as Jojo explained to him, the taps in the house hadn’t been working ever since the bombings. So it didn’t exactly turn out to be a full bath but when he emerged from upstairs half an hour later he still was barely recognisable. He had shrubbed all the dirt off his skin, was freshly shaven and wearing clean yet much too large clothes as Jojo had lent him some of his father’s. He had cuffed the trouser legs and rolled up the shirt sleeves but still he looked rather forlorn in them. It was odd seeing him in normal clothes instead of his uniform as both Elsa and Jojo only knew him in the latter. It was almost like for the first time they actually saw him as person, neither monster nor saviour, just an ordinary, hungry, hungry man whose eyes gave him away as he looked at the small meal of steaming potatoes, green beans, carrots and cabbage that Elsa and Jojo had prepared in the meantime.

To his remark about how good this looked (which sounded like the understatement of the century), Elsa just replied that he should wait saying this until he had actually tried Jojo's cooking to which Jojo hotly responded that at least he sucked less at cooking than Elsa. But K didn't pay them any attention anymore, all caught up in the food in front of him.

He ate with such obvious restraint, trying his hardest to not shovel everything inside him at once, that it was almost comical. Elsa and Jojo looked first at him and then at each other and then shared a silent little laugh.

When his most immediate hunger was stilled, they told him a little more about the past months. How the war had ended, how Elsa had been able to go out for the first time. How they had began to go to the countryside to find food, how they had started trading stuff. They told him Elsa’s true name and how they had decided that, officially, she should stay his sister for a little while longer. Inge would have been almost of age now, and as Jojo had no relatives nearby it was probably a better story to have him live with his almost adult sister than on his own with a strange Jewish girl, just if anyone should ask.

The truth was that Elsa also, despite knowing that it was perfectly safe now, dreaded the thought of going to a German administrative office and out herself as a Jew. Almost all her life that had been the most horrendous thing that could have happened and now she should go there and tell them everything about herself? She also had no kind of document proving her true identity, and she had no idea what would happen if she went there, what they would ask of her, if she could stay here. So for the moment it all seemed more trouble than it was worth and so she rather stayed Inge Betzler for a while.

»But what about you?« Jojo asked K eventually. »What will you do now? Do you still live in Falkenheim? Do you have a wife to return to?«

K shook his head and a hint of a amusement passed over his face. »I … um … no, I don’t have a wife and no, not really. I’m not really living anywhere actually. I’m _ausgebombt_. My flat was destroyed during the bombings and I sold my parent’s house last year so …«

»Oh, you can stay here! We have space! Please stay!« Jojo interrupted him excitedly.

»Oh,« K said hesitantly, »are you sure?« He sent a glance towards Elsa.

Elsa shrugged. »I guess it would make sense to have a …,« she paused, not wanting to say ‘man’, » … an actual adult in the house. For security I mean. Until Jojo’s father comes back.«

»Of course,« K said quickly, »until Jojo’s father is back.«

»So you will stay?« Jojo asked eagerly.

K thought for a moment, then he frowned.

»On one condition.«

Jojo raised an eyebrow (a skill he had, with the help of Elsa, finally mastered, he was still working on the winking though) and looked at him quizzically.

»Please stop calling me _Sie_ ,« K said. »I think we can all agree to be friends, right? Just call me K.«

*

And so K stayed. They found him an old mattress of Jojo’s parents in the cellar and just laid it down on the floor in the bedroom where the bed had used to be. It was a little worn out and dusty, but they put fresh linens over it and compared to the places where he had slept during the past months it was just heavenly.

When he finally let himself fall onto his new bed, his limbs sprawled across the huge mattress, it was still light outside. But he didn’t even have time to consider any of this, what any of this meant, that he was staying here, what he should do from now on. Instead he just fell asleep on the spot and slept so long and deep and dreamless as he hadn't in a very, very long time.

When he woke up the next morning, he needed a moment to remember where he was. But as his eyes wandered over the noble, dark wooden ceiling, it all came back and just as soon he heard Elsa and Jojo bicker about something while pounding down the stairs. He stretched and yawned, and then thought about what he would do today. He should probably check if he could find the suitcase with his belongings in the cellar of the former Youth Office and see if he could get anything from his flat, something he hadn’t bothered doing back in May, during the chaos of bombings and the ending war. He thought that he should also go to the post office to see whether he had any mail but then he remembered that it was Sunday which he was just then reminded of by the church bells as well, which started to ring for Sunday service.

He dressed himself and then went downstairs where he found Elsa and Jojo eating a meagre breakfast, just some chewy bread from at least the day before yesterday with margarine. Elsa was also making some fake coffee while Jojo was busying himself with a deck of playing cards that he had spread out in front of him.

»Do you know any tricks?« he asked K.

K shook his head. »Do you?«

»Not yet. I’m trying to figure out Elsa’s. She won’t tell me how it works.«

Elsa rolled her eyes. »Of course not, _Dummkopf_.«

»And where did you learn them?« K asked and took some of the bread Jojo had pushed towards him across the table.

»My father taught me,« Elsa said and poured them all a cup of fake coffee.

It didn’t taste particularly good but then K didn’t even very well remember what actual coffee tasted like.

He gulped down both the coffee-like substance and his little piece of bread and then soon got up again to go out.

»Where are you going?« Jojo asked.

»I'm going to see if I can get some stuff from my flat.«

»I thought it was destroyed?«

»Yes, but I’m not sure how badly. Maybe some things are still there.«

»Can I come?« Jojo asked.

»No, Jojo, it's way too dangerous,« K said as he put on his horrible, worn-out boots, the only kind of footwear he had, »those buildings can collapse any moment.«

Jojo frowned. »Then you shouldn't go either.«

»You're probably right,« K said, sighed, took one of Jojo’s father’s hats from the coat rack and opened the door. »See you later,« he said and then, upon seeing the look on Jojo's face, added: »I'll be careful. Promise.«

Not much had happened in town since he had ended up in captivity. Some of the rubble had been carried away, mainly to make the streets passable again. But nearly none of the destroyed houses were being repaired or rebuild. They just stood there, broken as they were. The church however had survived the war with barely a scratch. He passed it and the little alleyway next to it was filled with muffled, out-of-tune singing and the spicy-sweet smell of incense.

His flat had been in the house at the corner where Spatzengasse and Weberstraße met. If you looked at it now, coming from Weberstraße, it looked fairly okay. If you looked at it from Spatzengasse however, you saw that the building was missing its entire other wall. It looked like a dollhouse from that side, but with actual people sitting in what was left of the rooms. He went up through the staircase which looked almost absurdly intact as it was located at the Weberstraße side of the building. His flat had been on the third floor and apart from his bedroom missing a wall, the outer parts of the rooms were also missing parts of their ceilings. The wall separating the kitchen from the bedroom had collapsed, too. It was an absolute mess, but still somewhat accessible. Carefully he climbed into what had been his bedroom and gathered the few things he could reach, mostly clothes, and then a few things from the chaos that the kitchen was, thinking that even if they didn’t need them, Elsa and Jojo could maybe still trade them for food. He put it all into an old bag he found and then took a final look around and left, not even bothering to shut the door behind him. There was nothing of worth left in here.

He went to the building where the Youth Office had used to be next. It was occupied by the Americans now, as a large American flag and armed guards in front of it unmistakably made clear. For a moment his heart sank. Was this really worth it? Wasn’t it a silly, if not stupid idea to ask the Americans for personal belongings he left behind in a Nazi organisation’s building? But then he thought of everything he had had in there, almost his entire existence packed into a suitcase. All his important papers, mundane things like clothes, towels, shoes, but also memories, letters, photos—the few things he had gotten from the flat were nothing compared to it. So he decided to at least try. After all he had his release papers from the Russians with him and should be fine.

The guards’ German was very basic, and his English wasn’t much better which didn’t make the communication any easier. When they had finally understood what he wanted from them, the taller one demanded his papers in a broad American accent and then studied them with a grim expression for a very long while. Then he wordlessly searched him for arms and finally signalled to follow him inside. He led him into the larger office where Fräulein Rahm had used to have her desk. It was barely recognisable. Where there had been just the one desk of Fräulein Rahm, there were at least a dozen desks now, arranged in two rows at either side of the room. At each of those desks an American soldier sat, hammering something into a shiny new typewriter, talking on the phone or handling a large stack of files. Instead of dubious propaganda posters the walls were now decorated with maps of Germany, basic German vocabulary, and posters with illustrated slogans K only half understood. And instead of Hitler momentously staring into the distance, both Roosevelt and Truman were now benevolently smiling down from the wall next to the door, the former’s picture frame decorated with a black band.

The guard who had brought him inside talked to one of the soldiers behind the desks for a while and then left without regarding K with another look. The man he had talked to had gotten up and disappeared into what had used to be K’s office. After a long time he returned with a large brown envelope and handed it to him. K opened it in slight confusion and looked inside. There really seemed to be the documents and letters which he had kept in the suitcase but … He looked up and at the American again.

» _Der Rest?_ « K asked tentatively.

But the American just shook his head and looked at him impatiently.

»No rest,« he said.

»Okay. Thank you,« K said quickly and then nodded a good-bye and left, sensing that this was already more than he should have expected.

As soon as he was behind the next street corner he stopped and emptied the envelope. There was his birth certificate, bank papers, social security, that sort of stuff. And also photos and letters, all the letters he had kept in the suitcase. Old ones from days long gone which he had kept for sentimental reasons (minus the incriminating one of courses, which he had, with a heavy heart, destroyed at some point), from old friends back in Berlin, some of the last ones his mother had sent him and even the ones from his father and brother. And then there were the other ones. New ones, all bearing the same neat handwriting. Oh Freddy. He closed his eyes for a moment and then shoved it all back into the envelope.

He had thought of him. Often. All the time at the beginning. But then he had been so busy surviving that he had faded into the background a little bit. But at night, when he had tried to find sleep, he had been there without fail. Oh, he had wished for death sometimes. Not just because life, existing, had seemed more and more unbearable every day but also because there had been that silly idea that, when he died, Freddy would be there somehow. He did believe in life after death—he was a Catholic, if a bad one, after all. But he also knew that it probably wouldn’t work like that. That whatever happened after you died, you wouldn’t just be sent to catch up with some old friends. And besides, he was way too afraid of death to _actually_ consider wanting to die. He hadn’t confessed in almost two years now and with all that had happened … He would have never admitted this to anyone, was barely admitting it to himself, but the thought of death scared the shit out of him. It was a mystery to him how he had gotten through the past couple of years where dying had been something that could have easily happened on every single day.

A thought came to him then and before he knew it, almost against his better judgement, he was walking again, doubling at the next street corner, pushing open the door to another demolished building, climbing up a dusty set of stairs.

The building Freddy had used to live in was more severely damaged than his own one. The upper part of the staircase was buried under rubble and you could see the blue sky shining through where there had used to be the roof. Nevertheless, he was just able to get into the flat and found the two rooms Freddy had lived in. The windows had burst, and glass mixed with the remainders of a potted plant that had probably stood on one of the windowsills was lying all across the floor and crunched under his boots. Apart from that the rooms looked almost fine, just a couple of very large cracks across the walls looked a bit concerning. He looked around. There wasn’t much in here. The small sitting room barely had anything personal in it, there was just the furniture and a bit of decoration that surely belonged to the room and wasn’t Freddy’s. It wasn’t much different in the even smaller bedroom. A generic landscape scenery on the wall, a mirror that had fallen from the wall and broken. Two books were lying on the nightstand. He picked them up. _Die Powenzbande_ and _Narziß und Goldmund_.

He opened the last one and let his thumb flip through the pages until a little paper fell out. It was the picture of the Forget-me-not he had drawn for him at the hospital. He looked at it for a moment and then put it back into the book. He looked through the drawers of the nightstand but there was nothing interesting in them. Then he opened the wardrobe and found a couple of civilian clothes, a spare uniform, and a pair of fine leather shoes he had never seen Freddy wear. He slipped one foot out of his boot and tried the shoe on. It almost fit perfectly, was just a tiny little bit to large. He slipped out of his other boot too and then changed into Freddy’s shoes. For a moment he considered just leaving his boots here, but then he thought that they would probably still come in handy in winter. Under the bed he found Freddy’s suitcase—packed with his most important belongings just as his own had been. Clothes, documents—and letters. Mostly from his mother but also the ones from himself.

Without allowing himself to think or feel much he stuffed his own bag, his boots, the clothes from the wardrobe and the books from the nightstand into the suitcase and prepared himself to leave. Just then a thought came to him and he turned around once more and reached under the blanket on the bed. The bedding was a little moist as it had apparently rained in through the broken window, but really—there they were. His pyjamas, his stupid, silly, silk pyjamas. He sighed and closed his eyes. Then he opened the suitcase once more, put the pyjamas inside as well and left.

He didn’t dare to look at the letters. Neither the ones Freddy had sent to him nor the ones he himself had sent to Freddy. He just shoved them into the very back corner of one of the drawers of the only chest of drawers that still remained in what was now his bedroom and that he was now filling with his few possessions. For a moment he had to fight the urge to just burn them all up, throw them out, as if making them cease to exist would somehow make the past, the loss, the pain disappear too. But then he didn’t because there was something in him telling him that he would regret this later. But for now he just couldn’t bear their existence, too horrible all of that was, the actual words they had exchanged. Too raw that evidence of the past was. The only thing of Freddy’s (apart from the shoes) he took out was a navy-blue jumper, the rest disappeared, together with the suitcase, in the darkest corner of the cupboard.

He had spent the rest of the day downstairs with Elsa and Jojo. Just chatting, playing cards, and listening to the radio. The two of them had gladly accepted the kitchen stuff K had brought from his flat and had brought it up into their ‘warehouse’, as they had called it and, after K had enquired for one, Jojo had bountifully traded it for a new pair of sunglasses he happened to have up there. For dinner, there had been potatoes, carrots, and cabbage—again. It had been what had remained from the day before.

Now it had become evening and he had retreated into his room. He was sitting on the edge of his mattress, turning Freddy’s jumper over in his hands. Then, in one swift motion he pulled it over his head and put it on, even though it was way to hot and even more so up here, under the roof. He let himself fall back onto his bed, pulled the jumper up above his head and closed his eyes.

And like that he fell asleep.

*

They all three adapted to their new living together with astonishing ease. Even if it took Elsa some time to really get used to K being around. It wasn’t so easy, she found, shaking off that first impression of him. That had burnt itself into her mind in that moment, one of the most horrible moments of her life, when she had feared it would be all over. And even apart from that … Jojo was one thing. He was a child. But K—no matter what he’d done, that he’d helped her that one time—for whatever reason she didn’t know—he stayed a man, a German man, a German man in a uniform, horrendously alike, albeit not quite the same, the ones the men who had taken away her parents had worn. But with every day that went by, with every day that she saw him as that ordinary, sometimes crabby, sometimes rather sad-looking, but kind man, stripped of all his power and all his authority, that first impression of him faded away a little bit more. Even though they never talked about any of it. Not about what had happened that day, not about Elsa’s time in hiding, not about the war, not about the Nazis, not about K’s captivity. Just like everyone else, they tried to set their eyes on the present. Tried to leave the past and all its horrors behind. Tried to find solace in the fact that they were alive and well, that they had a house to live in, and some kind of a future ahead. And that they had each other.

However, their initial constellation didn’t last very long. Soon after K’s arrival, some inspectors of the town administration came by and decided that they had enough space to take in an elderly couple who had lost their home during the bombings and who had up until now lived in an old bomb shelter. For a moment, K had been afraid of them asking questions like what his connection to these children was, because of course, legally, he had no kind of right to watch out for them. But gladly, they couldn’t have cared less. After all, it probably just wasn’t their job and these days, where the orphanages were filled with children who had literally lost their parents in the chaos of the war, who didn’t even know their own names or where they came from, they were probably glad about every child they didn’t have to take care of.

The elderly couple, Herr and Frau Regenauer, moved into Jojo’s room while Jojo, along with with most of his furniture, moved upstairs to share Inge’s room with Elsa. The Regenauers were a little odd, but gladly they kept mostly to themselves. Most of the time they only saw them at dinner, which Frau Regenauer usually prepared now. However, her cooking tasted hardly any better than Jojo’s.

If anything, the arrival of the Regenauers only welded them together even more, and many a night was spent whisperingly complaining or giggling about this or that they had said or done.

As summer ended, the schools opened again. K thought it would be good for Elsa to go back to school, too, as she had missed so many years of education. But Elsa wouldn’t have it and declared that she had read many books and by now knew almost everything she cared to know, that she wouldn’t set foot in a German school ever again, and that all she wanted to learn now was English, as she wanted to leave for America as soon as possible.

Jojo’s face darkened every time she mentioned this, which she did often, and it darkened even further when she began to mention that she had met some American soldiers and then began to mention one of them in particular.

While Jojo was in school and Elsa out with her new American friends, K half-heartedly set out to look for a job. He had never really finished a career, had studied first law and then architecture but finished neither of it. He had worked here and there until the war had begun and thus become his profession. In the beginning, he was recruited to help on the ruins. Just as the people who had come by to rent out their room, Americans came by to look for more people who were free to help carry away the rubble. They wanted to take Elsa too, but she absolutely refused to because, of course, the Falkenheimers had had it coming and she wouldn’t move as much as a finger to clean up their mess. She didn’t tell any of this to the Americans of course, but in the end she really didn’t have to go because according to Inge’s passport, she still was a minor.

The work mainly consisted of clearing away the heaps of rubble, piece by piece, in long human chains. K didn’t last very long. Due to his non-existent depth-perception he kept dropping things, stumbling and falling on the rubble heaps, grasping thin air when being handed something. They moved him to transportation and, after a while, let him go completely. On one hand, he was glad to not having to do the hard labour anymore but on the other hand he also felt completely stupid and useless for not even being able to move some damn stones. And also, during that time he had gotten a slightly better ration stamp, which had been really nice to have for all of them.

After that, he set out to find a real job, because you had to had one in order to get proper rations stamps. Financially, it really wasn’t that important. He was receiving a little pension for the loss of his eye and after all, you couldn’t really buy anything for money anyway. He finally got a job as a draughtsman at a local factory even though he didn’t have an official qualification in it. He had however done a similar job before and with almost all the men still gone or dead, they apparently had a hard time finding someone for the job, because they were obviously desperate enough to take him, one-eyed and untrained as he was. He worked in an office together with five fellow, all female, drafters and overall it wasn’t the greatest thing in the world, he just had to draw strange little objects that made part of some larger machinery all day. But he had paper and a pencil in front of him and that was at least something.

And while the world outside went on as it had (food and pretty much everything else was still sparse, refugees kept coming, some soldiers returned, but not many, the Americans stayed in charge, the ruins still stood, and every once in a while an unexploded bomb was set off by children playing on them, usually killing but at least severely harming one or two of them), life in the Betzler’s house resembled almost something like harmony.

They got along well and shared the little they had. To K, the Betzler’s house, along with everything that belonged to it—from the rich interior design (or what remained of it) to the noises from the street and that squeaky floorboard in his room—soon it felt like home, much more like home than his Falkenheim flat had felt, yes even much more like home than any place in the past couple of years had ever felt. As days got shorter again, they spent the evenings sitting together in the living room, sometimes by candlelight when, once again, there was no electricity. K then told them stories from his time in Berlin, they played cards, charades or _Mensch ärgere Dich nicht_ , or they just listened to the radio while Jojo tried to think up card tricks, K read, and Elsa sat and scribbled something on paper that K had nicked from work.

And so, to an outside spectator, it must have seemed like everything was indeed almost fine. And yet, it wasn’t. Not entirely anyway. Because there was something else, under the surface. Something they barely ever addressed. Because under the surface, something had broken. Something had broken it. And at night its shadows came. It didn’t happen every night to everyone of them, but it did happen.

Elsa would wake up, in the middle of the night. Why, she didn’t know. Maybe it had just been a crack in the floor, or rain dripping against the window. But the why didn’t matter. She was awake and before she could muster one coherent thought, before she could remember anything, even who she herself was, something else awoke in her, an immediate, violent instinct. Not knowing where she was or who she was, there was just the realisation that she was exposed, outside, not in hiding. And all there was, the only truth there was, was fear. Fear, that someone had come for her, found her, would take her away. It made her heart race violently from one second to the other, made her jump out of bed, stand up, her eyes spread wide into the darkness, ready to run, to fight, anywhere, anyone, every muscle of her body tensed. And sometimes it took several minutes for her to realise that it was nothing, that she was safe, that it was over, the memories of who and where she was, of the last couple of months rushing back into her mind.

To Jojo it happened less violently. It was just a sadness that was constantly hovering over his life. In the daylight, when he was with Elsa, or K, or Yorki, when he went to school, he was able to push it aside. His heart felt almost light then. But at night, when darkness and silence surrounded him, Elsa’s steady breathing from the other side of the room the only sound there was, it rushed back into him. Fell on him like a heavy and massive substance. And the realisation that his mother would never, never, never be there again, hit him, again—every time almost as hard as the first time. K tried to talk to him about it once. Maybe he had seen the sadness creep up in him when he thought nobody was watching. Maybe it was just common sense to assume that a boy missed his dead mother. He told him that his own mother, too, had died not so long ago, that he knew it wasn’t the same, but that he still understood, at least part of it, what it meant to be without a mother. He also told him that it was okay to cry, that it was a normal thing to do, for everyone, for women, for men, yes, even for German men. And then Jojo hid his face in K’s arms and really cried for a while and that did help, a little bit at least. It made it easier to push that sadness away, and when it came in the night it sometimes didn’t feel as heavy anymore. But still, it came.

To K, the same shadows that had been there for decades, came. The same nightmares he had dreamt over and over and over again. He had always had trouble sleeping, ever since the first war. And when he slept, he dreamt. Horrible, haunting things of blood and misery and rotting flesh and guilt. But it wasn’t even this that concerned him most. By now, those dreams were almost like old friends. No, it was something else. Something that awaited him not only in the lonely hours of night but was there even during the day, sat next to him when he was at work, walked home with him through the cobblestone streets of Falkenheim, shared his dinner, yes, even in the evening it was there, while he was in the living room with Elsa and Jojo, it sat in a corner and never took its eyes off him. It was emptiness. Wide, bare, fathomless emptiness. Never, he could have imagined that a world so full of everything could feel so empty. How had this happened? How had he become so dependent on one single person again? Hadn’t he sworn himself once to never let that happen again? But everything had just fit so perfectly, it had come so easily, and truly he hadn’t believed, even considered, to live so much longer, that there could have been an after to all of that. And now there was, he was right in the middle of it, he was still here, and he tried to remember. Who he had been. When he hadn't known that there was a Freddy Finkel in this world. There had been something in him willing to live. Something that had cared. About the world, something, anything. Not much, no. Most of it had been numbed, suppressed by the chaos, the state of the world. But a little, little part there had been, still daring to care. There had to have been something. But he couldn't remember it now. Couldn't remember how it had been, what it had been. 

Now, that there was no Freddy Finkel in this world anymore, and he knew it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It is done! This story is finally starting to live up to its description! I promised myself to not apologise for a chapter taking longer to finish than anticipated anymore so I'm just going to say that I hope you didn't mind the waiting too much, and hope you're still around and are, despite everything, having a nice summer (when you're on the same side of the globe as I am that is).  
> (Sorry for this sad fest though – it's going to get better, promise!)
> 
>  **G l o s s a r y**  
>  **Ami** _pronounced something like ~ummy;_ not exactly a slur, more like an endearing but also kind of comical nickname for someone from the US; for perspective: I don't think it has the same abrasiveness to it as kraut but still it somewhat expresses that you don't take America quite as seriously as America would like you to; for Spanish-speakers: for me it feels somewhat similar to gringo; it also comes with a German nickname for the US: Amiland. You wouldn't use it in a serious or formal context but amongst friends or family it could go like this: "What does your sister do these days?" - "Oh, she has gone to live in Amiland."  
>  **ausgebombt** _lit. bombed out;_ someone who has lost his home and possessions due to bombings is 'ausgebombt'  
>  **Gauleiter** _lit. Gau (=district [hist.]) leader;_ the party leader of one of the 43 Gaue (districts), into which the Nazis had divided the German Reich, it was the second highest Nazi Party paramilitary rank  
>  **Obersturmführer** _lit. upper (=senior) storm leader;_ a paramilitary rank used in both SA and SS  
>  **Sie** _pronounced something like ~zee;_ the German formal pronoun with which to adress someone. Generally children "siez" (to adress someone with "Sie") adults and adults "siez" other adults unless they're friends or family. However, today the situation is a little more complicated. Young adults usually don't "siez" each other unless it's in a professional context or else. In universities it mostly depends on the lecturer and you sometimes vote on which form to use at the beginning of a course. Also in urban regions it can be common to use the informal pronoun "du" with strangers even when there's an age gap. Anyway, it's complicated, and today just as in the 1940s there's always that awkward moment when someone (it should always be the socially higher standing or older person) offers the "du".  
> 


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which K receives a letter, Elsa makes a visit, K and Jojo make a new acquaintance, and someone sits at the kitchen table.

A letter arrived for K not so much later.

Like it was custom these days he, too, had left his new address on the ruins of his former house. White chalk letters informed about the whereabouts of this or that family, sometimes sought notice from this or that missing person.

 _‘Fam. Nowak: Botenstieg 13 with Anton Stuben’_ stood there, _‘Herbert are you alive?_ _We’re at Tante Inge’s’_ , _Elli Wachtel at Fam. Stellgebauer’s, Kirchgasse 5a_ , and also: _‘Kurt Klenzendorf – Gartenstraße at Betzlers’_.

He had left a forwarding address with the post office as well but the post was a chaos these days, so you had to make sure.

He didn’t know which way this letter had found him but this way or another, it had. It had been a weird day already. Even though it had started out as just any other day. The alarm clock had woken him up way too early, he had turned from one side to the other, barely able to open his eyes (he had only fallen asleep when it had been almost morning) until there hadn’t been one minute left to spare. He had stumbled into his clothes, had quickly brushed his teeth, washed his face and combed his hair and then left for work without breakfast. There hadn’t been time but there also hadn’t been much to eat. There never was and he rather left the little there was for Elsa and Jojo and waited until the sparse meal they got at the factory.

Just as he had done today. He had worked, half-heartedly chatted with his co-workers, had eaten—a meagre, watery soup—worked some more until finally the factory bell had rung at 4 o’clock which had meant _Feierabend_ for them in the offices as well and had then headed back home. Until then, nothing had distinguished this day from the other ones since his return to Falkenheim.

But then, on his way back home he had stopped at the newsstand in town. Just to look what was going on (Bavaria had a new Minister-President—and a social democrat at that; according to a new law the Americans had established, Nazis, that is everyone who had been a member in one of their organisations, were to be removed from all leading positions; in Nürnberg the worst Nazis (the ones they had been able to catch that is) should be on trial soon; and, because that was important apparently, Stalin had gone on a holiday with his daughter) and when he had looked up there had been this man, roughly his own age, quite handsome, and he had been looking at him. _Looking._ And he had looked back, just for a fraction of a second. But there had been a tingle in his guts, and his heart had begun to beat a little faster. He had looked away then, had turned on his heels and walked away. Had walked his way back home without stopping once more, trying not to think about what had happened, and failed. What _had_ happened? Nothing. Nothing had happened. But something could have happened. Was he ready to do this again? Did he want this? No. But then again … it had been a while. And he was still flesh and blood. But it wasn’t his way to numb heartbreak in meaningless encounters, as many did. He rather suffered in loneliness and misery and alcohol, not that that was a more prudent way to do it, but it was his way. So no, this was stupid, surely mainly a physical, chemical, all natural reaction. He had done right to leave and by the the time he was home, the thought of being with that man almost repulsed him and filled him with an icky feeling that he wasn’t able to shake off.

The house was a chaos. They had done laundry last Sunday, today was Wednesday and it still hadn’t dried. It had been raining for days, weeks almost and they were saving the fire wood and coal rations they got for when actual winter would come. And so the laundry hung on ropes all across the kitchen and the living room, failing to dry and instead turning the house into a humid, mouldy smelling cave.

He kicked his shoes under the sideboard in the hallway and let himself slump face-down onto the new sofa in the living room. It wasn’t actually new and a disgrace compared to the nice one the Betzler’s had had before but it was at least something. Jojo was sitting at the dining table, laundry hanging above and around him, his nose buried in a school book.

»Can you help me with homework?« he asked K.

K grumbled. »What is it?«

»German.«

»I think you speak it rather well already,« he mumbled into the fabric of the sofa.

»Ha-ha.«

K sighed. »In a minute. I just need to lie down for a moment. I’m so tired,« he said, and then repeated, more to himself, »always so damn tired.«

Against his will, he thought of the man at the newsstand again. Maybe he should have talked to him after all. He could need some distraction, some relaxation. Maybe it wouldn’t have been so bad. He turned around onto his back.

»Where’s Elsa?« he asked Jojo.

»Upstairs,« Jojo replied and as if on a cue he heard her footsteps coming down the stairs.

She was reading, not even looking up from her book when she, passing the little table by the door, picked up a small stack of letters on it.

»There’s been post for you,« she said, dropped the letters onto K’s chest and flung herself into the arm chair, eyes still fixed on her book.

»There’s fresh bread in the kitchen,« she added absent-mindedly after a minute.

She looked tired, K thought, almost as tired as he himself felt. There was also this one line on her forehead that he noticed on her ever so often.

»Thanks. I’m not hungry,« he lied.

She finally raised her head now, only to glare at him. »I’ve queued up for it for like two hours. Don’t tell me you don’t want _bread_.«

»Alright,« he said quickly, »I’ll have some later. Thank you.«

He chewed on his lip for a moment as he, with his head leant back so far that he was looking at her upside-down, observed Elsa who had lowered her head into her book again.

»Is everything okay?« he asked then, cautiously.

Elsa looked up and their eyes met for a split second before she cast them down again.

»It’s nothing,« she said and shook her head.

But of course it wasn’t. It wasn’t nothing. Was everything rather. But she would have never told neither K nor Jojo about it. Because they wouldn’t understand, maybe even more because she didn’t want them to understand. Because she didn’t even quite understand what had happened herself, why it had happened, why she had gone there in the first place.

Jojo had asked her once, when it had still been only the two of them, before K had come to live with them. Had asked her where it was that she had used to live. Before. She had told him that the house had been destroyed during the bombings and so Jojo hadn’t inquired any further. But the truth was that it hadn’t. Even though she wished it had. Instead, it was still there, a good bit away, in another part of town, with not as a much as a scratch on it. She had been there before, shortly after the end of the war, when she had been able to go outside again, had passed the house almost like a spy, trying not to catch anyone’s attention, praying not to run into anyone who knew her from before, who could recognise her. Had glanced up at the bright light behind the window of what had used to be her room. Had once even stopped to read the names at the door, running her finger over them as if searching for someone when she knew exactly that theirs had been the second top one on the left. _Schulze_ , the sign had read now and she had almost been sure that she had still been able to read their sign through the thin strip of paper: _Korr._

But she had never dared to go inside, to confront whoever was living there now. Until today. She didn’t know what had made her. But the front door had been open and she had gone inside, climbed the stairs until she had stopped in front of the so well-known red door. A woman, presumably Frau Schulze, had opened her. She hadn’t had to explain anything. She had just said that she’d used to live here and she had been able to read it in the woman’s face that she had understood, understood perfectly, struggling to control her expression. The woman had looked at her like an unwanted but long expected, long feared intruder. She had still let her in even though it had been obvious that she hadn’t wanted to, would have rather slammed the door in her face—or called the police on her, if only that had still been an option.

Not much had changed. There had been other things now of course, other photos on the walls, tasteless porcelain figurines on the windowsill. But the rest had been same. It had been their furniture, their rugs, their drapes, their lamp shades. She had been lingering in the door frame to her old bedroom and her eyes had caught sight of the pencil-drawn marks on it, showing her growth through the years. The last one had been well below her eyes, she had never realised how much she had grown since they had left here. Inside her room there had been her bed, her wardrobe, even some of her books. And then she had remembered her towels, her stupid, stupid towels. She had known even then that she probably shouldn’t have mentioned them but she had remembered how much time her mother had spent working on them, embroidering them, each with another floral pattern. It had been a present for her bat mitzvah, which they hadn’t been able to actually celebrate anymore, during those last months of freedom, a freedom not worthy to be called thus. They had been to be kept stored away for when she would move out, marry.

They had still been there, in the large wooden wardrobe in what was now Herr and Frau Schulze’s bedroom. The woman had taken her there, reluctantly. Of course, she had said, she could see them, yes even touch them one last time if she liked. She paid for all this, and good money by the way. She was paying good money for this flat, and the furniture, all the provisions, she had paid good money for this. She didn’t have much herself. Both her sons had ‘stayed in the war’ and her husband, he was still in captivity. But if she wanted to she could buy one or two of them, for a good price of course.

Elsa had left her, left her behind, had stumbled out of the front door, into the cold, humid air. She had felt like she couldn’t breathe, like the air was suffocating her, had walked through the streets aimlessly, the ground beneath her feet like cotton concrete. She couldn’t stay here. Couldn’t stay here, in this town, this country, on this continent for one more second. There had been Americans patrolling the street and they had made eyes at her and she had walked away and hated them too.

When she had come back home eventually (Home? Was this home? It felt like home and sometimes that made her want to leave even more.) Jojo had been there already. He was an impossible child and always made her smile, even if she didn’t want to. She loved him, she couldn’t help it, she wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for him. Sometimes she wondered if he knew that. But today, even Jojo hadn’t been able to make her smile, to make the sick feeling inside her go away. So she had just gone upstairs. She hadn’t even been angry. She had wished to be angry, to be furious, to have the desire to destroy something, tear something apart, knock somebody out. But instead she had just felt sick. Had just lain there, not even bothering to change her damp socks, the soughing wind outside, the mouldy smell creeping up from downstairs, and wished she could have disappeared into some entirely different reality where this entire world, her entire past, perhaps even herself, didn’t exist.

She hated feeling like this. She hated everything sometimes. The last months had been hard, harder even than the time she had been in hiding. Then, she had just functioned, had lived day by day, ever expecting the end. Now, the horizon had widened up. There was a future to consider and a past to face, a present to deal with. Only now had she started to actually understand what had happened, and that it was over. Life had gone back to normal, meaning that you stepped out the door and saw the sky, that you ran errands and met people in the street. But it also meant that her parents really were gone, and the fact that it was over didn't undo everything that had happened. She felt lost sometimes. And helpless. Powerless. Hadn’t she been in her right? Wouldn’t every sane person in the world have agreed that she had been in her right? But who should have helped her? Had she really been in her right? Not morally but legally? She honestly hadn’t known. 

Then there had been the door. She had lost all feeling of time so she hadn’t been sure if it was his time already but just the way the door had been slammed shut, the muffled sound of shoes hitting the floor had been enough for her to know that it had been K who had come home and not the Regenauers.

She had heard Jojo and him talk, without being able to understand the exact words, just their voices indistinctly being carried up to her.

She didn’t even know why she had decided to go downstairs then. Probably she hadn’t wanted to be alone anymore, and sometimes just their presence comforted her—K’s and Jojo’s. And so she had gone downstairs. She hadn’t had the energy to talk, so she had taken a book, pretending to read. K had seen right through her of course. But she had said that it was nothing, even though she had known that he had known it wasn’t true—and even though she had known that he had known _that_ too.

K was flipping through his post now.

It was merely boring stuff, his health insurance, the bank, and … He sat up. The sender’s address and the name on the last letter had made him jump.

_Frau Auguste Finkel_

_18 Bad Wackerach_

_Im Wängartshang 7_

_(franz. Zone)_

From one second to the other he was wide awake. Hurridly his fingers ripped the envelope open.

He didn’t know what he had expected but of course it was Freddy’s mother inquiring whether he knew anything about Freddy’s whereabouts. She hadn’t heard of him since May, she wrote, and was concerned, and knowing that he had been his friend, she hoped that he knew where he was, if he was in captivity? She hoped he didn’t mind her asking but she had found his address amongst Freddy’s things … K put the letter down and sighed deeply.

»What’s up?« asked Elsa, who had for the first time this afternoon really looked up now, and almost sounded concerned.

»Oh,« K said, remembering that he wasn’t alone, »it’s just … it’s Freddy’s mother. Freddy Finkel—« He faltered for a second. He hadn't said his name for a long time. »Freddy Finkel«, he continued, »you know. She’s asking where he is. She doesn’t know. And I was his … you know … his superior.«

»Oh,« Elsa just made. K had mentioned Finkel once, or Jojo had asked about him that is. And K had told them that he had died. Elsa only faintly remembered him, knowing that there had been one other soldier that day. But the memories of that day were, although burned into her memory forever, rather blurred at the same time.

»Shit,« K said now, still holding the letter. »I should have thought about writing to her.«

He let himself fall back onto the sofa and buried his face into his hands. He felt bad for her, and incredibly sorry. But it was also the phrasing of the letter, the way she was writing about him like he wasn’t dead—it was ripping the heart out of him. He really hadn’t thought about writing her. Even though he should have known that no one else would have informed her. He had gone to the Cemetery Administration one day, wanting to know if there was a grave. Because someone must have found him after all when they had cleared away the rubble, like they must have found so many bodies amongst the ruins. But there had been nothing about him. His name was on none of the lists, in no file. There was a common grave on the cemetery for bombing victims that hadn’t been able to be identified, the lady at the office had told him and given him directions to it. He had gone but it hadn’t done anything for him. It had just been a lawn, with nothing more than a provisory wooden cross on it. So here he should have ended up? In a nameless mass grave? The thought had been so horrible that he had left to never come back and try to forget this place existed. He rather imagined that Freddy really had just dematerialised and vanished from the earth.

But hence all this, of course, no one but him knew that he was dead and thus no one could have told his family. He felt really stupid.

So now he would have to tell her. Would have to put that thing that he had tried to push away from his thoughts into words. He felt something clenching inside him, like everything inside him was revolting to even think about it. No, not today he wouldn’t. He couldn’t deal with this right now.

Instead he decided to now, finally, help Jojo with his homework.

*

He put answering the letter off for a couple of days until he finally forced himself to do it. He owed Freddy that much.

Before, he went down to the train station, a well-established trading place for black market articles, his pockets full of American cigarettes and food stamps, and really managed to carry home, well-hidden under his coat, an entire bottle of illegally home-distilled schnapps. It had been months since his last drink. There hadn’t been alcohol in Russian captivity of course—well not for the prisoners at least, the Russians had been pouring down vodka like it had been water. And then, back in Falkenheim, alcohol had been hard to come by. Officially, it wasn’t for sale, not for money, not on stamps, not even in bars or restaurants, and the prices on the black market were horrendous. But for this, he had decided, he needed it.

He hadn’t realised how much he had missed that burning in his throat, that warm and soothing feeling and the way it gradually spread through his entire body, made his knees go weak, his muscles relax. The way it took the edge off, numbed the pain. It made it easier, a lot easier, to allow the memories to flood back into his consciousness.

As he sat down to write, at Rosie’s dressing table in his—her—room, a cigarette dangling from his mouth and half a glass of schnapps next to him, to somehow put the tragedy into words, he suddenly felt himself reminded of all the letters he had written over the course of the last years. To mothers, to wives. Always assuring them that it had gone over quickly, that they had been brave, that they had sacrificed themselves for their country, for the Führer, that they had died as heroes.

But now, for the first time, he realised, he would be able to write the truth.

But what was the truth? That he had died in vain? A senseless, pointless death, in the last hours, minutes of the war? A war they themselves, the Germans, had started, unrightfully. Unrightfully—what an understatement. They had set loose a monster that had, in the end, consumed themselves.

All that was way too political, he realised. Freddy’s death wasn’t political. It was personal, so personal. Oh how he missed him. He always did and knew it but right now, writing this, thinking about him (something he didn’t allow himself to do very often) it really hit him just how much he missed him. His carefreeness, his positivity, his eyes and the way they looked at him, his wide smile, his smell, his touch, his everything. No, even though every death in a war had to be political one way or the other, it wasn’t political to him, not primarily. It was personal to him. It was personal to both of them.

Finally, he just wrote, more or less, all that. Wrote, after explaining what and how it had happened, almost sticking to the truth, that he had written many letters, always having to pretend that there was some sense, even solace itself in the deaths, the many, many deaths, he’d had to report. But that now, finally, he could state truthfully that there wasn’t. That there was no point in his dying. That Freddy, too, had become a victim of this brutal, cruel war, but that she could, perhaps, find solace in the fact that there was someone in the world sharing her pain and her loss, that it helped himself too, to know that Freddy had a loving family who would keep him in their memories and in their hearts—which, he realised, was actually true. Writing all this, for someone else to read it and care, to someone else, who he’d never met, but who was just as effected as he himself was, or even more so, it actually helped. It made the feeling of crushing loneliness that always accompanied him, just for moment, almost disappear.

He then also wrote that he had some of Freddy’s things and if she wanted him to send it to her, deciding that it would probably be the right thing to do, but also deciding that he wouldn’t let go of Freddy’s sweater, the pyjamas, the shoes (they were still the only proper pair of shoes he owned) and, well, the letters (which he still hadn’t looked at) of course.

That night, after another glass of that glorious schnapps, he fell asleep right away for the first time since he did not remember when, and, also for the first time in a very long time, not a single dream crept into his sleep.

*

He met the newsstand man again. Not on purpose, no. He just happened to go that same way at roughly the same time every day and so probably did he. And that’s how they met again.

What exactly it was that made him go with him? Lust? The wish for distraction? Loneliness? Perhaps it was also the conversation he had had with Jojo the other day. Jojo had been hanging around the house, visibly bored and K had asked him why he didn’t go out more, to play football or something, if he didn’t have any friends besides that Yorki kid? But in response Jojo, being the way he was, had only wanted to know where all _his_ friends were for that matter?

»You don’t even have a wife,« he had added and K really had been dumbstruck for a second. He knew very well that he was quite lonely at the moment. His old friends were scattered over the continent and for most of them he didn’t even know where exactly it was that they were, whether they were even still alive. He had tried to get in contact with some of them, from back in Berlin, from before the war. Had sent out postcards to addresses he remembered. Just to see if they would reach them, if they'd answer. But it wasn’t so easy, contact had broken off with most of them sooner or later, if they hadn’t died. It had been because of the war but also because of the situation in the 30s, when everyone had burned address books, letters, everything that could be incriminating or lead to someone else in any way. When he had left Berlin to take care of his mother, everything had already changed. Everyone had become cautious if not paranoid. There had been raids and arrests and vows to never tell on each other, to never mention the other’s name but then, after whatever had been done to the captivated in the interrogations, names had leaked out anyway. K had no idea if it was luck or loyalty that they had never come for him.

It had been years now that he had last heard of anyone. So his old friendships were on a halt. And he had admittedly made very little effort to make new ones. But he had never imagined that Jojo would notice that.

»I’ve … had … relationships. Okay?« he had said evasively.

»Sure you did. And when and where would that have been?«

»Well, not even so long ago and also long before you were even alive and … when I was in Berlin, there … There I had a lot of relationships. And friends, lots of friends. It’s a bit complicated what with the war and everything. But also this isn’t any of your business actually.«

»Oh sure,« Jojo had said unimpressed, »I’ve got loads of friends in Berlin too. I’m talking to them on the phone all the time. There you have it.«

It had just been one of their silly quarrels but it had hit him still. Should he really have become that pathetic? Even before Freddy he hadn’t really had anyone out there. Just the war and his comrades on the front lines. No wonder he had run into war like into open arms. But then Freddy. Oh Freddy. But he was no more. Shouldn’t the thing with him at least have shown him that he was still able to find someone? To connect to someone? He was far from feeling the way he had when he had met Freddy, but he at least was interested to some extent, and maybe this would at least teach him to just go for it again.

The man lived not far from the town square, in a crowded flat that made K think that he, despite not even having a proper bed, was living quite luxuriously. He was sharing a dark and stuffy room with, judging by the number of beds, separated from another by sheets thrown over washing lines, at least three more people, who, to his relief, weren’t home because something told him that his companion wouldn’t have minded if they had been.

It was what it was. Nothing bad, but nothing special either. After, he just got dressed, said goodbye, dangerously close to slipping out a thank you, went home without even knowing his name and decided to take another route home from now on.

Autumn came, leaves began to turn to hues of red and orange and one night they had to light the stoves for the first time.

Jojo became _Klassensprecher_ , class representative. Neither K, to who Jojo had told the news excitedly, nor Jojo himself were sure what exactly that meant at first. According to Elsa, as always well-informed about whatever it was the Americans were doing, said that they were democratising the schools, trying to dehitlerise the youth, teaching them participation, discourse and plurality. So he was a politician now, K stated and then wanted to know what he had even done for the class to elect him. But Jojo only shrugged and maybe went a little red and then admitted that he had been the only one who had volunteered to do it. But all the same he was proud of his new role and dutifully awaited whichever tasks there would be for him.

Another letter from Freddy’s mother arrived. She was devastated of course but thanked K, over and over, for writing to her, and for everything he had done for him, for being such a good friend, telling him how much and often and well he had talked about him. He read it once, then folded it up and stored it away with the other, still not read, letters and allowed himself another sip from his, by now almost empty, schnapps bottle.

On weekends they still set out to the countryside to find food. K had taken them to Röditz a couple of times which had turned out to be a good idea because the farmers there were basically his old neighbours and a little bit more generous with them as with all the strangers who came. When the weather was nice, it sometimes almost felt like a nice outing, the evergreen hills around them, here and there ornamented with streaks of red and orange and yellow. Those nights, after a successful ‘shopping day’, when they dared to eat until they were full, were only outdone by the days when Elsa brought home little treasures like chocolate, real coffee, corned beef or fresh white bread from her very own special source.

She really had started seeing that American soldier now. Jim, his name was and that was about everything K and Jojo knew about him. She was making quite the mystery out of him, at least that was what K and Jojo kept saying because she had never brought him home.

»You can, you know,« K had told her once.

»I know,« Elsa had replied and smiled and not brought him home anyway.

Jojo was on one hand glad she didn’t because that way it was much easier to pretend he didn’t even exist. But on the other hand he was also, mildly put, really curious. His very own imaginations of him practically haunted him. He pictured him as a handsome, tall, all grown-up man who smoked expensive American cigarettes all the time and spoke German badly and with a loud and broad and heavy American accent, if at all.

»How do you even communicate?« Jojo asked her once at the dinner table to which K responded with smooching noises at which, in turn, Frau Regenauer gasped.

»He’s teaching me English,« Elsa replied, ignoring K.

Jojo made a grimace.

»What?«

»Of course he is,« he mumbled into his soup, »so you can go to _A-me-ri-ca_.«

»Yes. As I’ve said before.«

»Yes, you always say it but you never actually do. Also didn’t you want to go to Paris or something? What happened to that?»

»War’s what happened to Paris. If I want to starve and sit in the cold I can stay here,« Elsa replied and then, after a pause, added, »also it’s not nearly as far away as I’d like it to be.«

To which Jojo pulled a face and then gloomily proceeded to eat his soup.

»What’s your deal with Jim anyway?« K asked Jojo after a pause. »What are you so concerned about? Is he taking your girlfriend away?«

»Elsa and I are just friends,« Jojo said, trying to sound very gown-up about it.

K frowned, half jokingly and half serious. »You two really do have a _weird_ relationship,« and then added, in Elsa’s direction, »are you sure you’re comfortable sharing a room with him?«

But Elsa just smiled. »It’s okay, I can handle him.«

They still got to meet Jim eventually.

Jojo and K had been out shopping, actually this time, had queued up for an hour in front of the shop to see if they’d have everything that was due to them according to their stamps. Because just because someone had decided they could have, for instance, 20 grams of meat per day that naturally didn’t mean that there would actually be that much meat.

In the end, they had been able to get some sugar, salt, sausage, vegetables, apples and a large sack of potatoes, so it hadn’t been too bad after all.

As they entered the house they were greeted by the radio in the living room playing loudly and when they proceeded into the hallway they saw that there, in the middle of it, was Elsa … kissing—

Jojo almost dropped the sack of potatoes he was holding in his arms.

»Is that …,« he began and then just gaped at them, totally transfixed.

»Jim I suppose,« K said quietly and then nudged him in the side and pulled him upstairs, as neither Jim nor Elsa had noticed their arrival.

The door to K’s room shut behind them, Jojo finally set down the potato sack and then looked at K.

»Did you know he was …«

»What?«

»You know.«

K gave him a long look before answering.

»Black? No, I didn’t. But so what?«

»Why didn’t she ever say that?«

»Why should she have?« K said as he sat down on his bed and began to pull off his boots.

Jojo frowned.

»Really, Jojo?«

»What?«

»Still a little Nazi?«

»What?!« Jojo blurted out, truly offended now.

»Don’t be such a baby. The way you were staring at them. Don’t do that when they see you. In fact don’t do that at all.«

»You looked at them too,« Jojo said defensively.

»I was just normally looking at them. You were staring.«

»It's just... I've never really seen one before. Have you?«

»You what?« K exclaimed, »you’ve never …« He sighed. »Well, of course you haven’t. Jesus, you have to get out of this town some time.«

»Where did you see them then?«

»Stop talking about ‘them’ like they’re some kind of … I don’t know. They’re just good old ordinary humans. Like you and me and everyone else.« He sighed. »Anyway … in the French army, in the English too, the American obviously … and in Berlin of course. There are people from all over the world in Berlin … « He paused. »Well, there _were_ at least.«

Jojo sighed and sat down next to K.

»So what now?«

»What now?«

»Are we going downstairs again?«

»Only if you behave.«

»Of course,« Jojo said and then went quiet for a moment.

»K?« he asked.

»Yes?«

»I’m not a Nazi.«

»I know,« K said. »I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that. I know you’re not. I mean you _were_ … quite the fanatic. But you’re a child and I also know you’ve changed. It was just a stupid joke. It’s just that you’ve been taught so much crap in your life—I just wanted to make sure there wasn’t anything left of that.«

»Were you?« Jojo asked after another minute.

»What?«

»A … Nazi?«

»Jesus, no. No.« He made a pause. »Although … I arguably went along with a lot—too much—they did. Went to war for them. Which wasn’t so great. Pretended to be a Nazi sometimes, which is almost worse. I mean I know it’s like … a couple of months ago, everyone was a Nazi, and now, no one is. This country is strange like that. But seriously, me personally, I wasn’t ever. But I also wasn’t as brave as your mother was. I was, well, scared. As everyone was.«

Jojo nodded slowly, regarding the tips of his boots, which where, like everything in this town, quite dusty.

»And because of that you’re still here and she’s not.«

K frowned. »You think she shouldn’t have done what she’s done?«

Jojo shrugged.

»And where would Elsa be then?«

He hadn’t thought about that.

»But it’s not fair. She was a good person. She didn’t do anything to anyone.«

»But Jojo. Life isn’t fair. Shouldn’t you have guessed that much by now? It’s not. And more often than not there’s no reward for being a good person. On the contrary, doing good almost always has a price. And sometimes, in times like the ones we lived in, that price is your own life. She was brave, she was strong. But it’s the weak people, the people who adapt, who give up their principles easily, who only look for what’s best for themselves who survive. Anyway the entire thing of who lives and who dies and who’s lucky and who’s not—it's not fair. Don’t believe that for a second.«

»So you think it was still worth it?«

»One hundred thousand trillion percent sure. I know it’s horrible. It _is_ horrible. And I’m not saying you can’t be, shouldn’t be sad and angry and all that. But I don’t think you should regret that she did what she did. Be angry at the ones who killed her. It’s their fault not hers.«

Jojo nodded and then sighed. »I just miss her so much,« he said quietly.

»I know,« K said.

He rested his arm around Jojo’s shoulders and Jojo let himself sink against him. They were quiet for a while.

»Have you ever thought about …,« K began. »Well at least _I_ thought … my brother and my father both died when I was quite young. Not as young as you, more like Elsa’s age. But still, it’s been so long that today I barely remember them. Not because I didn’t care about them, on the contrary. It’s just … memory is such a fragile thing. And it fades so easily, especially when you don’t want it to. So I thought maybe you could write about your mother. And your sister Inge too. Not like a novel. More like memories, stories, little details. Just to keep the memory alive. At least I wish I had done something like that. And maybe it’ll help a little bit too. To cope with your mother not being here anymore and all that. Maybe it’s a stupid idea. But maybe it’s worth a try?« He made a pause and then added, to lighten the mood, »also since I know you like writing and have experience in the publishing business …«

K could almost feel Jojo roll his eyes.

»Can you stop bringing that up?«

»I’ll stop when it stops being ridiculously hilarious.«

Jojo huffed.

»No but seriously,« K said. »Do you think it’s an idea?«

Jojo nodded. »Yes, I think it is.«

»Good. So. Ready to go downstairs? See if they’re still canoodling?«

Jojo sighed. »I guess.«

Before K opened the door Jojo stopped.

»K?«

»Yes?«

»How do you greet someone in English?«

K thought for a moment. »Um … you can say … ‘How do you do?’«

Jojo looked at him sceptically. » _Hou-doo-yoo-doo?_ That doesn’t sound real.«

»But it is.«

Jojo frowned. »I don’t believe you. I bet it means something really stupid. I’m not going to say it.«

»I swear it’s how you great people politely. Really. You can trust me.«

But Jojo shook his head as he followed K downstairs. »No chance. I’m not going to say that.«

Jim turned out nothing like Jojo had imagined him. It wasn’t even mainly about the colour of skin. It was just that he wasn’t really tall at all and not even particularly old, no, he looked young, almost like a boy still. His German was quite okay and when he spoke it wasn’t loudly, on the contrary he sometimes sounded almost shy. But the worst part was that, although he wouldn’t have ever admitted to that, he kind of liked him. He really seemed to be an okay, not to say nice, guy. But still he couldn’t ignore the lurking danger of Elsa leaving with him for America and thus he still had to keep an eye on the two of them, and no matter how much chocolate Jim brought him, he stayed suspicious of him. But luckily, the Americans seemed to be staying on for now, so at least it didn’t seem like _he_ would take her away to America very soon. They got to meet him a couple of times more but not often. Officially, their relationship hadn’t even been allowed up until recently and now it was still frowned upon and an American soldier visiting a German home rarely went unnoticed so they kept those visits to a minimum and instead met Lord knows where.

K didn’t meet the newsstand man again and no one else either. Two of his postcards were answered. One from an old girl friend from Berlin who, for a change, still seemed to live in that same flat she had always lived in but she had little information on any of their mutual friends from back in the day, and on none of K’s closest friends. Another friend K had been able to reach through his mother’s address. He was married now, had two children and, even though he sounded genuinely happy to hear from K, didn’t seem overly interested to intensify the relationship to his old friend from Berlin again. Another one down the marriage drain, K thought. And then: maybe he should get married after all. For the first time in his life the thought crossed his mind not in contempt but in consideration. So you’d marry someone you didn’t, couldn’t ever desire or love, not in a physical way anyway. But did that really matter that much? It wasn’t like he didn’t like women as human beings. Surely, there would have to be one out there that he could stand to be with? And how many couples really actually cared for each other anyway? How many couples desired each other after years of marriage? Wasn’t this modern romantic idea of marriage purely illusionary anyway? There was so much else. Children, he could have children. Some real job, a house, they could go on holidays, he would teach them things, …

He felt himself reminded of his mother. On some point when he had already left for Berlin to study, he hadn’t been able to stand the endless inquiring for girlfriends, engagements, and the parading of nice young women in front of him whenever he visited home. So he had told his mother. He still wasn’t sure if that had been a good idea or not. He was leaning towards the former but still, for the rest of her life, whenever she had looked at him, there had been a hint of sadness in his mother’s eyes and he didn’t want to imagine the amount of Hail Marys his mother had prayed for his sake. If he really wanted to live such a lonely life? she had asked him when he had first told her. And he hadn’t known what she had meant. Why a lonely life? In Berlin he had been the least lonely he had ever been in his life. Being queer had seemed almost normal, of course his mother couldn’t have imagined that in her small Bavarian village, but what had she known. But now, he finally began to understand. Was it his age? Or this place? Surely it had to be this place. Or maybe both. But of course here someone like him was condemned to loneliness. But where should he go? Berlin? From all he had heard it was but a dusty heap of bricks now. And also at the moment there was Jojo. And Elsa too. And he was glad about that. God knew where he would be without them. But in the end, who was he really to them? They were just a randomly thrown together group of lonely, abandoned people, that had somehow survived the past years as if war and terror had accidentally overlooked them while it had taken away everyone around them. A group that could be broken up again at any given moment. Elsa would leave, if not today or tomorrow or next week, she would leave eventually. And as soon as Jojo’s father would be back, Jojo wouldn’t need him anymore. What would he do then? Where would he go? He didn’t know and decided that he could just as well think about that then. For now he’d be here, and that was somewhat okay.

He shook his head at his marriage considerations the next day. What absolute nonsense. He really had hit rock bottom, hadn’t he? But still, as much as he condemned himself for it, it kept lurking in the back of his mind sometimes and who knows where it would have lead, hadn’t it been for a Saturday afternoon in late autumn.

It was his Saturday off and he had driven down to Röditz on his newly acquired bike, had visited his family’s graves, gotten a tiny heap of firewood from his old neighbour and a bunch of eggs, had smoked a good, American cigarette and taken a couple of sips from his (already third) schnapps bottle. Then he had cycled back, had bought the evening paper and was now riding down Gartenstraße. He passed some American soldiers who he greeted friendly by lifting his hat (he had realised that it was wiser to call unnecessary attention to yourself than to try to not call any attention in order to keep them from searching you for bootlegged goods, and he was after all carrying not only illegal schnapps but also fire wood and eggs), passed playing children in the street, Frau Affeldt from the other side of the street who was walking her dog, and some man he vaguely recognised from his school days in Falkenheim. It was already getting dark and the first windows were illuminated here and there, just as the Betzler’s living room windows as he saw when he reached the house.

When he opened the door and began to manoeuvre his bike inside, Jojo, who had apparently been waiting for him, came running towards him from the kitchen.

»There you are!« he shouted excitedly.

»What’s up?« K asked, bewildered.

»You have to come to the kitchen! Come, come!« He tried to pull him down the hallway.

»Can I set this down first?«

»Yes, but hurry!« Jojo urged him impatiently.

»Jesus, did you make stew again?«

The last time Jojo had cooked for them (the Regenauers had left for a weekend to visit some elderly aunt) it hadn’t exactly been a culinary delight.

He finally followed Jojo towards the kitchen. He entered it—and stopped short.

There, at the kitchen table, sat a man, with short-shaven hair, and turned around when he heard K enter the kitchen.

No. No, no, no, he thought.

»No. No, no, no,« he said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I made it! I managed to finish this chapter in the year 2020! Ha! I'm hoping there is still somene around to read this, in case there is—I wish you all a happy new year, let's hope that things get better and in any case stay tuned, I will do my very best to not let you hang on that cliff for too long! <3
> 
> (I've also finally added a glossary, which I've been meaning to do from the very start. I was just throwing random German words in there at times and I mean, hey, maybe it's also good to not have you understand everything, add a little mystique, have you google something, if most things aren't clear from the context anyway... But a proper glossary probably couldn't hurt either, haha! So you'll find a list at the end of every chapter from now on!)
> 
>  **G l o s s a r y**  
>  **Feierabend** _lit. celebration evening;_ the end of a work day; popular accessory: a Feierabendbier - yes, exactly, a beer you drink to celebrate the end of your work day  
> 

**Author's Note:**

> /13 April 2020/ My draft was going to be deleted, so I decided to start publishing this now. It is still a WIP but a lot of it is already written and from what I can see I'll have plenty of time in the next weeks to finish this. But also I'm not a fast writer and sometimes something appears to be almost finished and then it takes another 3 weeks to actually finish it (*side-eyes first chapter*). Also I don't think every chapter will be as long as the first one?! But then I didn't see that coming either? So I'll be honest, I don't know how often I'll be updating this but I hope it will be every two or three weeks. But then, in these times, who knows what will be going on in a couple of weeks, heck, tomorrow?  
> Hang in there, stay home and don't forget to dance!
> 
> → quote at beginning from W.H. Auden's poem _September 1, 1939_


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